


Afterburn

by Sea-Glass (PJ_Marvell)



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Attempted Murder, Depression, Fire, Grief, Loss, M/M, Moderate Violence, Murder, attempts to solve the murders, canon-typical post-apocalyptic despair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26377807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PJ_Marvell/pseuds/Sea-Glass
Summary: or, Murder on the Khartoum Express. Tjelvar Stornsnasson is under a lot of pressure. He's a Harlequin agent, charged with the delivery of something vitally important to the Khartoum outpost. It was meant to be just a simple delivery job - but then his mission partner turned up dead and now Tjelvar is stuck on a train with a murderer and no way to tell who might be the next victim. And then up pops Edward Keystone - still beautiful, cheerful and certain, despite the devastation of the past year (and the presence of a murderer on the train), that everything will turn out just fine. Now they've been charged with discovering the identity of the murderer and keeping everyone else alive until they reach Khartoum. A tall order - especially as everyone has their secrets, and if anyone discovers the identity of the two bickering teenagers in Edward's charge, they might become targets too...
Relationships: Edward Keystone/Tjelvar Stornsnasson
Comments: 16
Kudos: 32
Collections: Rusty Quill Big Bang 2020





	1. Cover

**Author's Note:**

> This is my submission for the Rusty Quill Big Bang 2020! I have had the pleasure of working with two incredibly talented artists:
> 
> Afarai - [See more of her work here](https://afarai.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Jaliuboots - check out their work on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/the.one.the.only.mimi.q/), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/QTheonetheonly), and [tumblr](https://theonetheonlymimiq.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Or, if you can't wait, just scroll down to see the _spectacular_ cover they made jointly for this fic...


	2. The Khartoum Express

It was five o’clock on an autumn morning in Egypt, and Tjelvar Stornsnasson had not slept in twenty-four hours.  _ A method performance _ , he told himself, lounging artfully against the faded faience-blue tiling of platform five at Aswan station, hair rakishly loose and an uncomfortably elaborate waistcoat chafing at the undersides of his arms (and his fedora still perched on his head because some things were sacred, even now). Not, as it turned out, that any of this mattered; Tjelvar had diligently spent the night arranging his hair, cultivating the bags under his eyes and selecting a wardrobe of ragged finery and then stepped out to catch his train and into a current of events that had done his work for him.

The first of what passed for winter’s chill down here was in the air, the heat of the day had yet to bake the anxiety out of everyone and it could almost be felt, shivering between the gusts of the storms that blew through the station rafters. The train at platform five hissed gently, a sound like a breath sucked through teeth as though it too had just heard the rumour that the borders of the Safe Zone were rolling south again, down the Nile to Samalut. The darker rumours, those whispered over strong drink, said perhaps Samalut was temporary, and the border would be at Luxor before long. So it didn’t mean much, Tjelvar’s studied swagger and furtive glance over his shoulder - his gait may have perfectly said  _ orcish lush on the run from his drinks bill _ , but no one was really looking. Aswan was waking to the news that it was yet another few miles closer to danger and though the station was near-silent now, the platforms would be crowded before the sun was properly in the dust-shrouded sky. The city was moving south.

So, too, was Tjelvar - ticket bought at short notice and in anticipation of a relatively quiet, company-free journey. However these hopes were dashed as the locomotive  _ Hatshepsut _ hissed to a slow stop at the station, pulling behind her the Khartoum Express, pride of the East Sahara Line. Aswan was the hub of the East Sahara Railway Company, the next grandest station after its bejewelled terminus in Cairo had to be abandoned as the Harlequin security cordon fell. Aswan had taken a different approach to the gilded drama of Rameses station; Aswan was in the new style, an austere confection of straight lines picked out in azure and gold. The East Sahara office here was a hushed place, artificially cooled with magic and alchemy, the staff’s footfalls almost silent as they paced around the waiting room dispensing chilled cucumber water. It chased after the understated opulence of pre-cataclysm Paris, an atmosphere quiet enough that the whispers of wealth could be heard in every line of its construction.

Of course, in recent months it had all got a bit dusty.

Even the shining brass sides of the locomotive were sand-stained from its run down from Luxor - the line curtailed from what would once have taken in the long course of the Nile from its delta at Alexandria to its confluence at Khartoum - and it seemed that this fading gem of African luxury was suddenly popular again. Tjelvar, having escaped the stifling stillness of the waiting room for the sandswept platform, bit down a growl of annoyance. Of all the mornings he could have chosen to make this run, he picked the one that would be filled with the fleeing remnants of whatever aristocracy Luxor could still cough up.

It set something tense and anxious across his shoulders, but he swallowed it down, keeping his breathing even, his expression disinterested and distant. The timing had been agreed - if the sudden popularity of the Express proved to be an issue, he’d see the signal to abort and that would be that. He just had to wait.

The train let off a long hiss of steam and fell silent. A few metres up the platform, Tjelvar could see the locomotive crew dismounting. They were covered in soot, goggles and kerchiefs around their heads, heavy boots and thick blacksmith gear over thin cotton undershirts. They were directly in contrast to the prim spotlessness of the East Sahara representatives on the train - as they pushed their goggles up their faces and laughing slung enormous coal shovels over their shoulders, Tjelvar suspected this was something of a point of pride. Two of the crew unloaded an enormous bucket and opened a valve on the side of the engine. A long stream of water poured out and seemed to fall halfway into the bucket and gather in the air above it. Tjelvar blinked and as the last of the water left the engine, the shapes made sense. A water elemental in the shape of a mermaid lounged in the bucket, stretching her arms and yawning, glittering transparent tail hanging over the side. She was carried past, joined by an orc made of dull red living flame who let out a roar of laughter that sounded like a crackling bonfire and left scorchmarked footprints as he went past. Just as they drew level with Tjelvar, the replacement crew came the other way - three much cleaner halflings with goggles, aprons and shovels, carrying a bucket in which sat a young elf the colour of a mountain lake and holding the hand of a halfling girl who burned white hot. As the elementals passed each other, the sounds of flame, water and steam filled the air - friendly banter, Tjelvar supposed - and the water elementals exchanged a high five, resulting in a sound like a stone hitting a pond and a small puddle on the platform.

Tjelvar watched after them, blinking in slight surprise, watching the replacement crew chat among themselves as they stepped onto the  _ Hatshepsut’s _ footplate with enough fascination that the slamming open of the waiting room door made him jump. A tall, scarred woman in a tightly buttoned woollen coat stalked out, spitting curses in russian over her shoulder. She stalked towards the train without glancing into the quiet alcove Tjelvar had been observing from; the gnome who darted out behind her, almost as red as his whiskers and near-quivering with rage and sputtering did look around and, seeing himself observed, pulled himself together and hefted his fussily neat gladstone bag. He stomped on to the train, scowl almost as impressive as his moustache, and Tjelvar immediately felt sorry for whichever porter had to show him to his cabin.

The train whistled, already an hour behind schedule and keen to make up every minute on the long, uninterrupted stretch between here and Khartoum. Tjelvar felt a spike of nervousness, shoved it down, waited. The blinds in the first window of the second-class carriage flickered once, twice, and Tjelvar pushed himself away from the wall. The gleaming locomotive at the front of the train let out an enormous gout of steam and Tjelvar changed his swagger to a jog. The steam valve thudded shut, and in the moment of pure morning silence between the releasing of the breaks and the first deep, breathy shunt of movement, Tjelvar leaped aboard.

“I’m sorry sir, I didn’t see you there,” said a halfling attendant, pressed back against the wall with his fez askew and very wide eyes. “Do you need a hand with your luggage?”

Tjelvar fixed his best smarmy grin on his face and shook his head, trying not to feel guilty that he’d probably almost knocked the young man flat as he’d barrelled through the carriage door. “I travel light,” he replied, carelessly waving the slightly ratty valise at his side, the one that might contain the means of saving the world, and shrugging.

“Er, right,” replied the steward, whatever internal script he was following evidently thrown off by suddenly-appearing orcs in threadbare and garish cravats. “May I see your ticket?”

Tjelvar presented it with a flourish and passed it to the steward, taking a moment to clock the name on his small, cartouche-shaped name-badge.  _ Youssef Syed _ .

“This all seems to be in order,” said Youssef, smiling politely and still a little doubtfully up at him. “If you’d care to follow me?” Tjelvar was led out of the carriage he was in, taking a moment to notice that all of the first class berths were occupied save for one at the far end. Another halfling steward, older and far more assured than his current guide, was ushering the scarred woman in the woollen coat into it.

“Please, it’s really too much,” the woman was protesting, weakly.

“Captain Ivanova, it’s our pleasure,” said the steward smoothly, plucking the captain’s holdall from her fingers. Tjelvar took in the cut of her coat, the worn leather of her boots.  _ Ex-aeronaut, without a doubt _ . “Please, on behalf of the East Sahara Railway, I insist.”

“Oh, well,” the Captain was waved in as Tjelvar passed, looking up and catching his eye as he was led past. Her cheeks flushed slightly pink, guilt flickering across her face. He noticed that her long coat had hastily-sewn Harlequin emblems on it, over patches of slightly darker material where, presumably, Meritocratic insignia had once sat. Tjelvar held her eye, allowing his face to fall solemn, and nodded. If that coat told the true story of her war thus far, then a first-class berth was the least she deserved.

When they reached Tjelvar’s berth, he knocked his shoulder against the door and overtipped, fumbling the coins into the patient steward’s hand. Youssef thanked him with all the effusiveness due to a possibly-still-drunk passenger in a second-class sleeper carriage and Tjelvar allowed himself a grin before waving him off and pulling the door of the sleeper berth behind him.

It was a small, neat little space that Tjelvar would have named cosy if he were in any mood to appreciate that quality. The narrow and well-pillowed bunk was tucked beneath the luggage rack and above the fold-out sink, the wallpaper on the adjoining wall a pleasant, tasteful french stripe. Tjelvar allowed himself a moment of collapsing onto the bed, taking measured, steady breaths and appreciating the way the springs of the mattress rocked him in time with the movement of the accelerating train. It was even insulated, he fancied - the rattle of the wheels on the rails was muted compared to the corridor. It would be an easy place to fall asleep, if he didn’t possibly have the fate of everyone and everything he’d ever known nestled in his nondescript luggage.

He stared unhappily up at it through the slats in the rack, worrying his lip between his teeth. There was a good reason he’d spent the night before properly outfitting himself, practicing each mannerism and expression in the mirror until it was muscle memory, painstakingly putting together a wardrobe that strengthened the story. He’d had less than twelve hours, so adapting to a new name was unfeasible and false documents too risky. Tjelvar had simply to hope that no one on the train knew Tjelvar Stornsnasson was a Harlequin agent, and moreover didn’t suspect that he was one trusted with couriering vital things across the bits of the globe that remained accessible and one or two parts that weren’t.

“A simple job,” his handler had said, dropping the small, heavy, carefully-wrapped package into his hand. “Half the distance of some of your jobs, and in comfort, too!” Tjelvar had watched the bead of sweat run down the old dwarf’s moustache, and said nothing. There were no easy jobs, and a soft pillow was fine until someone was holding it over your face while you slept.

He groaned, rolling back to standing and shaking himself. There was no danger of falling asleep with the way he felt, but apparently lying horizontal let all the gloom run from the pit of his stomach to his head. If he were to be a carefree and louche, fits of melancholy would never do. Besides which, he had work to do. Tjelvar reached down to the impeccably folded sheets and patted until he was answered with a crinkle that was certainly not up to Khartoum Express standards. He slipped his hand under the blankets and pulled out a copy of yesterday’s newspaper and smiled in satisfaction when he flipped to the puzzle page and found it filled out in small, neat hieroglyphs.

The train rocked slightly, undetectable if you’d been seated perhaps, and Tjelvar walked to the window. The blind was pulled down almost all the way - Tjelvar raised it to see nothing but a khaki blur. He sighed - the sky in Aswan had almost been clear. The city’s buildings kept the sandstorm mostly at bay, sending it whistling over the rooftops to turn the sky a sickly yellow. Sometimes the wind died, just a little, just enough to see the sun shine bright enough through it that it was almost too bright to look at again. Out here, as the train raced through the desert parallel to the Nile valley, the haboob had hit with full force again.

“So much for a view,” Tjelvar grumbled, flicked the newspaper back open and settled in to await the announcement of breakfast.

It came just as they passed the temple at Abu Simbel, or at least so Tjelvar was told. The rattling beige blur of the sandstorm outside hadn’t changed, the winds hitting hard enough to rock the train gently. The same steward - Youssef - came to summon him, giving his door a wide berth in case he was tempted to do anything unexpected again.

Tjelvar waited for him to leave and stood, hesitating a moment. Anxiety won out, and Tjelvar reached quickly into his luggage and pulled out a battered silver hip-flask, and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket before heading out.

The scene in the dining car was much as expected - seats in arrangements suitable for a variety of genteel body types, fitted out in elegant monochrome minimalism. The halfling staff in their impeccably pressed uniforms walked quickly and soundlessly between guests, their gait already well adapted to the train’s movements. A motley crew sat huddled over toast and mimosas, the ragged edge of what remained of the sparkling classes.

_ Well then _ , thought Tjelvar.  _ What do we have here? _ A young dwarf, surprisingly bright gingham bows tied in her beard, added four cubes of sugar to her coffee as Tjelvar watched and then, with a furtive glance about to make sure she was unobserved, added another two.  _ Bronwyn Jones _ , thought Tjelvar, thinking back to the dossier left in code in his newspaper.  _ Ex-researcher at Kew Gardens. On a Nile cruise when the calamity started, has since been aiding in agricultural research in Luxor. _

A middle-aged woman in all black and a dissatisfied expression spread marmalade on her toast.  _ Effi Weber, booked on a connecting train from Khartoum to Kinshasa, already trying the patience of the crew and her fellow passengers _ .

The gnome with the ginger moustache almost the width of himself sat bolt upright over his tea, holding a newspaper by the corners, like a society lady handling something sticky. There was a fraction of a second as Tjelvar’s eyes met the gnome’s, and there passed between them - nothing. Just the flicker of two diametrically opposed travellers casting a dispassionate gaze across one another in an unfamiliar dining car. A gaze perfectly practiced and unobservable save to those who knew both Tjelvar and Archie Sterling - for that was the gnome’s name - well, and was also looking for it. Tjelvar deliberately didn’t raise an eyebrow, didn’t wander over and ask what the fracas in the waiting room had been all about. Archie would find a way to tell him if it was going to compromise their mission.

Tjelvar therefore felt his stomach lurch as his eyes finished the circuit of the room and he found his gaze pointedly avoided by Nathaniel Skye.

Tjelvar dropped his eyes back to his own coffee, stirring it with a disinterested air as his heart accelerated. Archie was his partner on this mission - the one to watch his back as he protected the package - Nathaniel Skye had not been in the brief. Why was he here? Had something gone wrong at HQ? Was there another desperate Harlequin mission on this train? Tjelvar felt a cold sweat beading his shoulderblades at the thought of not one but two beacons of magical power, sending their signal out into the sandstorm outside. They’d be picked up for certain.

With something of an effort, Tjelvar caught himself, pushed the panic down. It wasn’t his concern. The three of them knew the protocols here well enough - if you spotted another Harlequin, you ignored them. The risk of compromising cover was too great for any of them to interfere. Even if it was just an odd coincidence, Nathaniel was one of the best Tjelvar had ever worked with - he might even be an emergency backup, should things go awry. He risked one last glance over the top of his breakfast menu and saw Nathaniel propped at the bar with all the ease of a tourist, and Archie sniffing dubiously at his eggs. That was unlikely to be an act, Tjelvar thought sourly. Archie was eagle-eyed and better with locks and a dagger than anyone Tjelvar had ever met, almost silent as he moved and faster than his stature would suggest. He was also a chronic complainer and Tjelvar had no doubt he’d have to put up with hours of bellyaching over Nathaniel’s presence once they reached Khartoum.

Nathaniel was somewhat less...subtle. A rake and an adventurer, his speciality was dazzling the room while other things went on in the shadows. Occasionally he’d even do those shadowy things while actively dazzling. Tjelvar had personally witnessed him flirt with a countess so successfully she hadn’t noticed him slip her diamond off her neck and into Tjelvar’s pocket. Plus, he was generally a better conversationalist than Archie, in that he understood conversations were meant to have two participants.

But that wasn’t the way things were now and it was useless to speculate. Not to mention, unprofessional. The professional thing, he told himself, was breakfast, no matter how little his suddenly bubbling stomach might want it. Forcing down as much as he was able, he eventually gave up and returned to his cabin, his progress slowed by a service cart loaded with enough breakfast to feed about five people. Tjelvar saw it arrive at one of the larger first-class suites, heard the door open on a snatch of teenage voices raised in argument, then close again. Tjelvar grinned to himself, enjoying the knowledge that he was in an entirely different carriage to whatever ruckus that was, and continued down the train to his own bunk, where he resolved to stay for as long as possible.

It turned out to be possible until roughly an hour before dinner when the combination of monotony and anxiety finally made Tjelvar too restless to remain there anymore. He paced the cabin a few times, barely getting enough space for two and a half strides and then decided that if he was going to have a reputation as a drunk, he may as well furnish some evidence for it.

When he returned to it, the lights in the dining car were lowered, candles flickering on each table, the cast of faces somewhat changed. 

A woman in Paris silks sat draped across a vaguely orcish young man in a severe black uniform. She was very young and very beautiful and although there were some threadbare seams in her two-seasons-old clothes, there were not many. The woman was animated, already loose in her movements as though she’d started her pre-dinner drinks immediately after finishing lunch, and the young man was discomfited. Tjelvar spent a few amusing minutes trying to work out whether he was most uncomfortable about the way the woman’s curling dark hair kept brushing his face, or whether it was the glances she kept shooting the chiselled, dashingly-scarred gentleman who had positioned himself in her immediate eyeline.  _ Katharina von Hohenheim and her faithful manservant Hugo Steiner, _ thought Tjelvar.  _ German nobility attempting to keep the aristocracy alive _ . The dashingly-scarred gentleman wasn’t in Tjelvar’s notes - another joiner at Aswan, Tjelvar assumed, although he didn’t recall him from the platform.

The naval officer - Captain Ivanova - sat at an adjacent table, hunched in an awkward posture that said “old injury.” She rolled her shoulders, wincing as she did so, before getting to her feet and shuffling out of the dining car.

“Good evening, sir.” Tjelvar turned to the bar as the door closed behind the captain to see a frank, friendly face looking back at him over the rim of a highball tumbler being polished to within an inch of its life. “I’m Yasmina, and I’ll be running the bar for this trip down to Khartoum. What can I get you?”

“Whatever has the most gin in it, please” replied Tjelvar, momentarily letting his jaunty grin slip and watching as Yasmina nodded with a sympathetic sparkle in her eye.

“Certainly, sir. How does a gimlet sound to start?”

“Ideal.”

To Tjelvar’s surprise, it almost was. The gin was smooth and the lime juice just the right side of too sharp, the chill of the glass pleasant in a carriage that was fast becoming stuffy despite the overlaboured ceiling fans. With each sip Tjelvar felt another small knot of anxiety loosen - dangerous, perhaps, but after the day he’d had, almost irresistible. In fact, he probably would have drunk the first rather too quickly and ordered a second had the train not started to slow suddenly as he hit the halfway point of the glass.

There was a swell of muttering and some grasping of furnishings as the train came to a sharper than expected stop. Tjelvar felt himself slipping off his stool and allowed the momentum to carry him to standing.

“What,” he asked the bartender, catching his glass as it attempted to escape down the bar. “Was that?”

“Nothing to worry about, folks!” Youssef, the nervous young steward, rushed around the tables, righting glasses and smoothing ruffled feathers. “This sometimes happens if a camel herd stray onto the track ahead of us, I’m sure we’ll be moving in no time, not to worry…”

A yell echoed up the train corridor - a second followed, then a third.

“Er...I’m sure everything is fine…” Youssef twisted his fingers. “If you’ll just...er…”

Tjelvar drained his glass and dropped it back to the table. “Yes indeed, everyone, if you’ll all stay here and enjoy the excellent cocktail menu, we’ll just go and investigate the noise.”

Tjelvar followed a slightly flustered Youssef to the door, nodded rakishly to the room, and pulled the door to the compartment shut behind him.

“Terribly sorry if I presumed too much,” he added in the quiet of the corridor. “But you looked like you could use a little assistance.”

“No that’s - that’s fine, sir,” said Youssef, pressing ahead down the corridor to where several voices were now raised. “I think, think maybe some numbers would be good…”

They reached the last first-class carriage and pulled the door open. On the far side of the carriage join stood the dwarf in gingham, clinging to the emergency stop lever and sobbing while another uniformed halfling comforted her. Just emerging from the other end of the carriage was Nathaniel Skye, walking at speed with the questions forming on his lips until he reached where they stood and he saw his answer.

Lying between them on the floor was the body of Archie Sterling, throat bloodied and an expression of almost comical shock on his face. Tjelvar glanced up - saw the same mix of fear and gritted dread flit across Nathaniel’s face that bubbled in his own gut.

“Youseff,” said the halfling currently trying to comfort the hysterical woman, her expression serious and her voice calm and steady -  _ Nadiya Hassan _ read her name badge. “Run back up to the front. Let Yasmina and the train crew know we have a problem. I’ll stay here and keep watch over the...the scene.” Youssef nodded and dashed away. “Sirs, if I could ask you for your help - if one of you would please escort Ms Jones back to her room, and the other ask everyone in their cabins to stay in them, I’d be much obliged.”

“Of course,” said Nathaniel, stepping forward to put a gentle arm around the dwarf’s shoulders. Tjelvar nodded to them both and turned to begin working his way along the train. He found everyone in their cabins save those he’d seen in the bar, all familiar faces from the station waiting room or the breakfast service, with one exception - a Mr Rackett, who Tjelvar couldn’t put a face to. He made a mental note of names and empty cabins nonetheless and continued up until he was at the end of the first class carriage, from which he could still hear the sounds of raised teenage voices. He sighed, knocked, and opened the door.

“Excuse me -” Tjelvar began.

“-it  _ back _ you camel-breathed  _ bastard _ ,” snarled one halfling teenager, sparks darting from the ends of his fingers.

“Make me, you lizard-tongued fuckface,” snarled the other, levitating slightly above the bunkbed.

“Language!” thundered the enormous golden figure between them, holding them bodily apart. It was this tableau that greeted Tjelvar as he opened the door, three sets of eyes turning to him as the berth’s sliding door clicked back, and for a moment Tjelvar forgot everything. Forgot Archie, the weight in his jacket, the train, the desert and the end of the world. Forgot everything except the snowbound morning in Albertville where he’d first seen the equally dumbstruck face looking back at him now, almost two years and three thousand miles out of its proper context.

“Oh! Hullo, Tjelvar,” said Edward Keystone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art in this chapter by the superb Jaliuboots - check out her work on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/the.one.the.only.mimi.q/), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/QTheonetheonly), and [tumblr](https://theonetheonlymimiq.tumblr.com/).


	3. The Detective

It was some time later, and an argument was happening.

Argument was slightly inaccurate - everyone had gathered in the dining car to all shout at once and Tjelvar was regretting his decision to decline the offer of a second gimlet on the house. The train was still stationary and somewhere down the dim carriage corridor, Archie Finch’s body had been meticulously photographed and then parcelled up and placed in a cool and sheltered nook in the luggage car. Presumably someone had also mopped the blood out of the carpet - Archie had bled quite a lot more than one might expect from a smallish gnome and Tjelvar didn’t envy whoever had got that particular job.

Meanwhile, all the passengers had been gathered into the dining car - for a briefing and some calming tea, the train crew had said, although the paranoia in the air was almost thick enough to cut.

Nadiya, the steward with the commanding air, walked into the car from a door that led to the staff quarters and was immediately assailed by almost every voice. The questions may have been different, but the plea behind them was the same:  _ fix this. Make it not be happening. Make us feel safe again _ .

“Please, everyone, a moment,” she held up her hands, and there was a schoolteacher harmonic in her voice that hushed everyone to a simmer. “I’ve spoken to the driver - we’ll be here a little while longer while traffic ahead of us clears on the line. The decision has been taken for us to push on to Khartoum -” here the muttering swelled and she raised her voice. “- where we will be met by the proper authorities. We will do our best to continue service in the best traditions of the Khartoum Express until then.”

“We’re still two days from Khartoum!” Hugo Steiner, supporting a theatrically hyperventilating Katharina von Hohenstein, was on his feet. “We need this to be dealt with  _ now _ .”

“I understand, sir, but there isn’t anyone appropriate to seek aid from between here and there.” Nadiya’s voice was patient but firm. “None of the settlements en route have much more than a constable’s office, and this isn’t a stopping service - none of them are expecting the Express. The best way for this to resolve is for us to carry on to our destination.”

“All very good points,” said Captain Ivanova. “But in the meantime there’s a murderer on the train with us. What do you suggest we do? Sit back and enjoy ourselves?”

“For all we know, it was one of the train crew!” The scarred adventurer - by process of elimination, the elusive Mr Rackett - peered suspiciously around at everyone in the carriage. There were several gasps among the clientele. Bronwyn, the gingham-decked dwarf still clinging to Nathaniel’s sleeve, looked like she might faint.

“The train crew were all accounted for by multiple witnesses.” Nadiya may have looked like she was about to lose her temper, but her tone remained even and commanding. “We’re here to keep you safe until Khartoum.”

As the gaggle of voices threatened to rise again, Tjelvar spoke up. “Could we ask someone to investigate?”

There was a moment of silence as the rest of the passengers mulled it over.

“Yes...but who?” Hugo peered around at everyone else in the dining carriage. “For all we know, anyone on this train could have done it.” He glanced back up at Tjelvar then, eyes raking over him as though seeing him for the first time, and narrowing in suspicion. “Thinking of angling for the position, are we? A neat way to avoid scrutiny? Weren’t you the one to find the body?”

“Somewhat more like the fourth, actually,” replied Tjelvar with his wintriest grin. “I merely suggested it as an alternative to simply waiting out the train journey. Because whatever we do, we can’t get off.”

A couple of people glanced over at the door, through which a near-frantic Bronwyn had tried to leave earlier. She’d been lucky not to be blown immediately out of the train by the sandstorm winds; her luggage had been less fortunate and had bounced off the corner of the track and then into an abyss concealed by the swirling sand. Youssef had told them they were on a viaduct over a sharp dip in the Nile Valley - it had been a dizzyingly long time before they heard the bag hit the ground below.

“He is right, though,” Captain Ivanova looked apologetically at Tjelvar and shrugged. “Anyone could have done it - there’s no one here who can guarantee their innocence.”

And, as though he’d been waiting for his cue, Edward Keystone entered the dining car.

“Er,” he said, stopping short at the dozen-odd people suddenly looking hungrily at him. “Sorry. Ms Hassan, Youssef asked me to tell you he was done with - with what you asked him to do.” Edward nodded at the room and began to back out of it as though he’d have to move slowly in case anyone decided to bite.

“Wait,” said Hugo, and for a moment Tjelvar could see the next few minutes crystallise into inevitability in the air around them. “You’re a paladin.”

“Er, yes,” replied Edward, seemingly unsure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. “For Apollo. Sun god.”

“Then you can help us,” Captain Ivanova sat forward. “You’re the only one on the train who can solve this murder.”

“Oh no,” muttered Tjelvar, feeling his shoulders sag in unpreventable defeat.

“Er - what?” Edward looked between the expectant faces in the carriage. “I don’t know - I don’t think-”

“Captain Ivanova is right,” Nadiya looked first thoughtful and then inspired. “As a paladin, you’re least likely to have been the murderer, and you can’t do evil or tell a lie. If we’re to solve this murder before we get to Khartoum, you’re the only one who can help.”

Edward looked around the carriage as though judging which window would be the most expedient to jump out of and in the midst of the inexorable sinking in Tjelvar’s stomach, he found a moment to feel sorry for Edward. Paladins and clerics tended to stay at the front, far away from the Safe Zone and so they never knew quite the status they’d achieved among those still at home. The stories were hushed, grand images of the final, blessed gleaming line between the world and the inexhaustible appetite of the blue veins. To their credit, Tjelvar’s infrequent visits to the front bore this out as mostly true - although it edited out the blood, the death, the anguish of fighting those you’d been standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the day before. The reputation of paladins as heroes was deserved; Tjelvar could see it all on the faces of his fellow passengers.  _ Keep us safe. Make things right _ .

And really, a paladin was a good choice of amateur detective in these circumstances, even without the extenuating circumstances. Tjelvar had known a few who got creative with their definitions of  _ justice  _ and  _ kindness _ but largely, someone whose living relied on them being a good person tended to be one you can trust. To a group of terrified people stuck on a train with a murderer while an unending sandstorm battered at every window, it must have seemed like the gods themselves had heard their wild, fearful prayers and sent salvation striding into their dining car.

It was just that whole thing went a bit sideways when you tried to fit Edward Keystone into it.

“A-alright,” said Edward, after swallowing hard. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank you, Mr Keystone.” Nadiya’s posture suggested some of the evening’s weight had finally been lifted from her shoulders. “Now, everyone, may I suggest you wait here until we begin moving again? I trust you feel adequately protected now?”

A general decrease in the tension in the atmosphere suggested it was so, and Nadiya turned away and back to the business of running her train. The stewards scuttled about, setting up a buffet in lieu of the evening’s dinner service, and the rest of the passengers huddled in pairs or small groups and made what must have been the most strained of small talk.

“Hullo again, Tjelvar.” Edward’s voice came from behind him, pulling Tjelvar from his reflection. Literally - Tjelvar had been staring moodily through a window into the fading light outside, through his own mirrored eyes, looking for any break in the sandstorm and generally fretting.

“Evening, Edward,” he turned, a smile he in no way felt on his face. Edward’s expression, when he met it, suggested the paladin was having an equally difficult time being cheerful.

“Sorry about earlier - the boys fight sometimes and they get a bit...well they curse all the time and I can’t make them stop.” Edward shrugged. “They’re having dinner in their room. I didn’t want them to have to hear all this. I shouldn’t be away too long.” Edward glanced nervously over his shoulder. “Especially if it’s as dangerous as everyone thinks.”

“It’s really all right, Edward,” replied Tjelvar, unsure of what else he could possibly say in that moment. Up popped Edward, a man he’d long presumed dead, and apologised to him about some juvenile insults in the aftermath of a murder on the train. Everything about the man was out of context and Tjelvar was having a good deal of trouble fitting his presence into his own mind. “Er - the boys are family friends, I assume?”

“Oh - yeah, I reckon,” Edward nodded brightly. “I think most of their family are my friends - their brother and their sister are wicked, anyway. Saira - that’s their sister - asked me to come along with them on their trip - make sure they were safe and that.”

“Right,” said Tjelvar, attempting to construct a longer sentence and completely failing. It wasn’t that he had nothing to say - more that he had so much it was all getting caught in a bottleneck somewhere.

“Bit weird, us being on this train together, isn’t it?” Edward gave a solid attempt at a cheery grin and ran a hand through his hair, attempting to push a few stray locks out of his face. It didn’t work. “All that time since France and now we’re both here in Egypt.”

“Weird doesn’t quite cover it,” replied Tjelvar weakly.

“Good to see you, again, though!” This time Edward’s smile did look genuine, and that Tjelvar understood. Some people remembered how to take joy in small things saved from the devastation of the war and Tjelvar supposed it wasn’t surprising that Edward would be one of them.

“You too - you’re...are you well?” Tjelvar looked at him, trying to search out his face for clues as to what the intervening time had held for him.

“Oh yeah, fine, fine now.” Edward hesitated, just slightly, before adding “now.” Suggesting there had been a time when he wasn’t. “You? How’s things? It’s been ages!”

“Oh well, you know…” Tjelvar shrugged, awkwardly at a loss for something to say - it had been so long since anyone asked and seemed interested in an honest answer. “I mean the world ended, so it could be better.”

“Oh right, yeah.” There was an uncomfortable pause while Edward looked down at the carpet. “Er, I’ve never investigated a murder before.” Edward’s eyes glanced guiltily up. “Do you...know what I’m supposed to do...first? Or like...at all?”

“Right,” sighed Tjelvar. “Traditionally, you’ll start by interviewing the witnesses. Might I suggest you start with me?”

Edward looked scandalised. “But I know you’re not evil, Tjelvar,  _ you’d _ never -”

“Eddie!” Tjelvar hissed. “You still need to do it and perhaps while we’re somewhere having a more private conversation, I can give you a few tips?”

“Oh, right!” Edward took Tjelvar’s forearm firmly. “This way, evildoer!” he boomed, before subsiding a bit. “Er...potential evildoer, I mean.” And before Tjelvar could actually combust from frustration and second-hand embarrassment, Edward led him from the room.

They walked a short distance down the corridor, and stopped within sight of Edward’s cabin. The sound of mealtime bickering drifted gently through the door and Edward visibly relaxed.

“Sorry about that,” said Edward, letting go of Tjelvar’s arm.

“No, no, it was...good improvisation.” Tjelvar sighed, going to push his hair out of his eyes and then irritably remembering it was loose and would just fall back forward. He felt suddenly stupid, standing in front of Edward in his frayed finery. Edward’s bright, expectant gaze hovered on his face.

“Well...so...I haven’t actually investigated a crime before either,” Tjelvar began. “But the way it looks to me - there are only a finite number of people who could have done it. It was someone on this train because Archie was alive when we left Aswan, and this train hasn’t stopped anywhere until now. What we have to do is find out who had the means and the motive…” Tjelvar glanced up at Edward’s face. “That is, who had a reason for wanting him dead and who had the opportunity to make that happen.”

“Right. So we ask people if they had those things?” asked Edward.

“Yes, but indirectly, Ed. No one is likely to tell you “oh yes, I hated him and I was briefly alone with him and decided to take my chance.” Tjelvar watched a small line appear between Edward’s eyebrows. “We’re going to have to ask everyone about how they knew him and what they’ve been doing on this train. Hopefully once we’ve done that, we’ll spot something that doesn’t fit.”

“And that will lead us to the murderer?” Edward brightened briefly.

“With any luck, yes.” Tjelvar looked Edward straight in the eye, trying to radiate seriousness. “One thing you have to bear in mind, Edward, is that people are going to lie to you. About lots of things, not just whether they were the murderer. You can’t trust anyone.”

“But I can trust  _ you _ , right?” Edward’s big honest face creased further with concern.

“Well...no, Edward.” Tjelvar pursed his lips. “For all you know, I might have murdered Archie.”

“But...you wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Tjelvar?” Edward looked like he might burst into tears if the answer was  _ yes _ .

“Well, no, but -” Tjelvar started.

“So did you kill him?” Further paladin tears looked likely at a positive answer.

“I...no I didn’t, but that’s-” Tjelvar stuttered.

“Well then!” Edward crossed his arms across his chest and looked like he was suppressing a triumphant grin.

“Eddie you can’t just  _ believe _ me!” Tjelvar’s hand went back in his hair, this time threatening to yank it in frustration.

“Well, lying is evil.” Edward poked him in the shoulder. “You’re not evil. So.”

“Look, quite apart from debates about how you can definitely call a sentient thing  _ good _ or  _ evil _ ,” said Tjelvar, briefly rubbing his forehead. “What if someone had a good reason for killing Archie?”

“Like...what if he was evil?” Doubt clouded Edward’s face again.

“Yes, exactly!” Tjelvar nodded encouragingly. “Or - what if the murderer didn’t mean to? Or if they have a noble reason for lying? Or what if everyone is evil, but only one of them is the murderer?”

“I don’t think I’d be able to tell.” Edward looked like he might be on the verge of panic.

“Right, so, perhaps what we do is talk to everyone and see what we find out.” Tjelvar tried to keep his voice steady and gentle. “Then we can go from there.”

“Right. Yeah.” Edward visibly pulled himself together and he nodded. “And don’t trust any of them.”

“Not a single one.” Tjelvar nodded back, approvingly.

“This is going to be more complicated than I thought,” said Edward, turning back to the dining car.

“Yes, Eddie, I think you might be right,” replied Tjelvar, feeling something akin to doom settle on his temples.

“It’s okay, though,” Edward turned to grin over his shoulder at Tjelvar. “I’m sure I’ll manage now I’ve got a proper genius on my side!”

And he opened the dining car door and strode inside, leaving Tjelvar blinking slightly in the bright light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art in this chapter by the awesome Afarai - [See more of her work here](https://afarai.tumblr.com/)


	4. The Evidence of the Passengers

“I’m absolutely beside myself,” sniffed Freifau Katharina von Hohenstein of Sponheim, dabbing at her exquisitely powdered nose with her french perfume-laced handkerchief.

_ Well, you’re certainly beside  _ somebody, thought Tjelvar tartly, looking at the way Katharina had managed to drape herself over both of the dashing, handsome men attending her. Hugo Steiner, the slightly orcish young man who’d been hovering around her since Aswan, looked down in consternation at the curls of dark hair straying from the pins and ribbons that kept a precipitous bun in place.

“We won’t let anything happen to you,  _ meine Dame _ ,” he murmured, seeming to draw himself up within the lines of his serious black uniform. Katharina sniffed and looked up at Hugo with a watery smile and Tjelvar was already beginning to regret promising to help Edward investigate.

After the supper buffet had been cleared away, Edward had requested that everyone return to their cabins, under Youssef and Nadiya’s guard. They had then set up the headquarters of their investigation in the dining car, and asked the occupants of each cabin to come to them to be interviewed, one at a time.

Only that had gone pear-shaped almost immediately as apparently Katharina had picked up an extra companion between the dining car and her cabin.

“I just...to have suffered everything I have, to finally feel I was safe and not in danger anymore...and then...then...that poor gnome!” Katharina was overcome with another bout of sobs, leaning into Hugo’s broad shoulder even as she reached with her free hand to grasp the fingers of the steely-eyed, scarred gentleman sat next to her. Her shoulders shook a moment, and the gentlemen spent a moment alternately looking in concern at her and poisonously at each other over the top of her head. Tjelvar looked between the three of them, framed by the tasteful luxury of the dining car, and allowed himself a sour moment of considering how great her privations must have been.

Katharina seemed to steel herself, fanning her eyes a moment before leaning across the narrow table to grasp one of Edward’s hands in both hers.

“You’ll keep us safe, won’t you, Mister Keystone?” Her eyes were wide and her pretty pink lip wobbled, every line of her body language trying to convey something vulnerable and defenceless. Tjelvar almost laughed - it was Edward who looked like he was caught in the lamplight.

“Er, of course I will, ma’am,” replied Edward, stuttering slightly and pinned beneath her beseeching gaze and the scowls of the gentlemen. “Er, I have some questions to ask, if that’s okay?” Edward looked sideways at Tjelvar, who gave him an encouraging nod.

“Er, did you know the...the victim?” Edward asked.

“I’ve never seen him before I got on the train,” said Katharina. “Only ran into him once at breakfast, and he spent most of the time reading his newspaper.”

“Okay, thanks.” Edward nodded, glancing down at where Katharina still gripped his fingers as if wondering when he could escape. “Where were you about the time it happened? About two hours ago now?”

“Well I was  _ here _ ,” she said. “Hugo and I were having a discussion about where we were to go after Khartoum and then dear Sasha introduced himself, and we were simply having a pleasant pre-dinner conversation when...when…” Katharina lifted her handkerchief to her nose and dabbed at it again.

“I can vouch for that,” said the adventurer in a gentleman’s drawl. He turned a wide, roguish silver-glinting smile on Ed and Tjelvar. “Sascha Rackett, at your service.”

“I see, Mr Rackett,” said Tjelvar drily, pausing in his note taking. “All three of you were together in the dining car between five and seven pm?”

Sascha Rackett was halfway through nodding when Hugo Steiner spoke.

“Well, not quite, Sascha old chap.” Hugo’s smile was about as friendly as one worn by an inhaling dragon. “You wandered off for a bit just before all this unpleasantness started.”

“Oh Hugo, Sascha was just changing for dinner.” Katharina’s fingers fluttered consolingly over Sascha’s forearm, releasing Edward from his confinement.

“Oh I’m sure,” replied Hugo with the sort of smugness usually reserved for someone saying “checkmate.” “Just wanted our intrepid investigators to have the full picture.”

“Of course, Hugo,” said Sascha’s mouth, while his eyes gave Hugo a look that said  _ “die.” _

_ And yet I couldn’t find you when I went to check on everyone _ , thought Tjelvar, scribbling a note to that effect down. The silence stretched out, punctuated only by the twitching of his pencil. Tjelvar nudged Edward’s knee beneath the table.

“Oh, right,” said Edward, his voice slightly strained, and when Tjelvar looked sideways he was surprised to see tension in every line of his shoulders. “Er, did you notice anyone who might have had a problem with the victim?”

“Well no, but why would they?” Katharina sniffed. “He was just a poor man interested in his newspaper, why would anyone...oh!” Her eyes suddenly went wide with horror. “You don’t suppose...could he have interrupted someone trying to break into the first class cabins? Could...could I be next?”

Katharina looked to Edward, who had already pulled both his hands off the table and out of grabbing reach. Hugo took the opportunity to gently move Katharina into him, cradling her against his shoulder and giving her back gentle, soothing pats. Sascha leaned away, having clearly lost this round and sulking about it.

“I think it’s a little early to tell why this was done,” replied Tjelvar, diplomatically. “Rest assured, we’ll do our best to solve it.”

“Yeah, I’m sure we’ll find who did it,” said Edward. “Er, is there anything else you wanted to tell me?”

There was a general demurral and a sense that the interview participants’ attention had wandered somewhere else.

“Okay, thank you for your time,” said Tjelvar, sensing a hesitation from Edward.

“One more thing,” said Edward, his tone colder and sharper than anything Tjelvar had come to expect from him. Tjelvar looked at him in surprise, seeing his tone mirrored in his suddenly hard, chilly gaze. “Mr...Rackett - have you ever been to Rome?”

“No?” Tjelvar fancied the confusion on Sascha’s face matched the puzzlement he felt.

“Right,” said Edward, before nodding at the rest of the table and pulling his chair back. He stalked over to the bar while Tjelvar ushered their guests out of the dining car and asked Youssef to fetch the next passenger.

“Ed? Rome?” asked Tjelvar, approaching almost cautiously, wondering where the slight churn in his gut had come from. Edward wouldn’t snap or bite or strike - indeed, he looked around at once, something troubled on his face. That didn’t do anything to soothe Tjelvar.

“Can I tell you later, Tjelvar?” Edward fidgeted, fingers twisting in front of him, eyes avoiding Tjelvar’s.

“Of course,” replied Tjelvar, not understanding at all but liking none of the possible explanations his anxious mind presented him with.

“Great.” Edward sighed. “Who’s next?”

*

“It’s all right, Ms Jones, take your time.” Edward gently patted Bronwyn Jones’s hand as she cried into Edward’s own handkerchief. It was a bright thing - all suns and lyres - that was now almost soaked through with the tears of the young dwarf. Of the two crying passengers, Tjelvar was more inclined to believe this one - Bronwyn had been a strange shade of grey when Tjelvar had found her clinging to the emergency passenger alarm, and she didn’t seem to have recovered very much since then.

“And then,” she took a long, shaky breath. “After I finally found the silly thing, I hurried out of my berth and I was fussing with my pocketbook trying to make sure I had my purse because I didn’t see what was in the corridor until I heard a splash and then I looked  _ down _ and -” Bronwyn’s face screwed up again and Edward murmured something soothing as she did. 

“When I came to,” she whispered, eventually. “The lovely train steward and this gentleman and his friend were there.” She gave Tjelvar a watery smile.

“Friend?” Edward looked at Tjelvar.

“Another passenger,” he replied, giving Edward a small shake of the head that meant “later.”

“Did you know the victim, Ms Jones?” Edward said, turning back to the interview.

“No, she sniffed, blinking her red-rimmed eyes. “I chatted to him in the waiting room. Asked if he wanted a sweet. He said yes. He seemed like a nice man.” She pressed the handkerchief to her nose again.

“Did you see anyone when you left the dining car to fetch your bag?” Tjelvar asked as she gently scrubbed at her nose.

“No,” Bronwyn shook her head, sniffing. “Everyone was either at dinner or getting ready for it.”

_ Meaning no one saw you, either _ , thought Tjelvar with an internal sigh.  _ Another one without an alibi. _

“Okay, Ms Jones, I think you should go back to your cabin to rest, now.” Edward gave her hand a final pat and smiled. “Let us know if you remember anything, okay?” Youssef appeared at her elbow and ushered the still-weeping Bronwyn back to her cabin. 

“She seemed nice,” said Edward, hopefully, as the dining car door closed behind them.

“She did,” sighed Tjelvar, before turning to Edward with a tired smile. “Remember what I said about not trusting anyone?”

“Not even Ms Jones?” Edward looked like a child told Yuletide would be cancelled.

“She doesn’t have an alibi, Ed.” Tjelvar shrugged.

“This isn’t much fun, Tjelvar.”

*

“My name is Galina Ivanova,” said the Captain, easing herself into the seat and rolling her shoulder to loosen it. “I’m going to Khartoum in the hope of finding work on one of the fishing vessels there.”

Tjelvar noted that down, wondering absently if she meant airships or the more usual water kind. He wondered how you’d fish from a dirigible before jolting himself back to the present.

“Thank you, Ms Ivanova,” said Edward. “Did you know the victim?”

“No, I can’t say I did,” she said, cocking her head to one side, before smiling ruefully. “That wasn’t a moustache you’d forget.”

“Did you speak to him on the train?” asked Edward as Tjelvar belatedly returned to scribbling.

“No.” Galina shrugged. “There wasn’t really a chance to. He stayed behind his newspaper and I don’t really speak to strangers.”

Tjelvar’s pencil didn’t pause as he took notes, but his mind began to tick faster. Omitting that you’d argued with a murder victim shortly before the murder wasn’t necessarily an indicator of guilt, but still. It was the first obvious lie and it was interesting.

“Right,” Ed surreptitiously searched through his notes for the next question. “Er - where were you between five and seven pm tonight?” 

“I was in my cabin, I’m afraid,” she smiled bleakly. “I was reading. No one to confirm that.” Tjelvar dutifully noted it down and didn’t write anything to the effect of  _ no alibi, clear motive _ . There could be a perfectly logical explanation that didn’t lead immediately to Galina being the murderer.

“Did you hear anything, Ms Ivanova?” asked Tjelvar. “Yours was the closest first class cabin to the scene of the crime.”

“No, I didn’t,” she shook her head regretfully. “Honestly, I think I might have nodded off. That cabin is one of the most comfortable places I’ve been in for a while, honestly.”

“Glad to see they’re treating you well, Captain,” said Tjelvar, giving her possibly his first genuine smile on board this damned train.

“It’s far too much fuss, honestly,” she replied, and the flush that covered her scarred cheeks was almost genuine.

“Okay.” Edward glanced at Tjelvar, who glanced over his notes and nodded. “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.” They stood and walked away from the table, and Edward leaned towards Tjelvar. “That’s not good, is it? If no one knew where she was at the time of the murder?”

“It’s not,” murmured Tjelvar back. “And there’s something else I know about Ms Ivanova that might make things a bit worse. I’ll tell you later.”

“Right.”

*

“I was reading in my bunk - didn’t see a thing, I’m afraid.” The frank look Nathaniel Skye gave them would have won prizes. His hazel eyes were clear and concerned, his face radiating a sincere desire to help. Not for the first time, Tjelvar admired the man’s skill. “I don’t really talk to people on trains - I like my own space, you know?”

“Do you know anyone who might have a reason to hurt the victim?” Nathaniel’s eyes didn’t flicker to Tjelvar, but Tjelvar felt the tension in the moment nonetheless. There was at least one reason sat in the inside pocket of Tjelvar’s jacket, and if Nathaniel didn’t know the specifics, he almost certainly knew the generalities.

“Really didn’t interact with the chap, I’m afraid.” Nathaniel shrugged. “Not a clue. Didn’t see him talking to anyone else on the train except that sweet dwarf girl with the lemon drops. Suppose he could have insulted her knitting, but otherwise I don’t know.”

Tjelvar’s pencil paused before writing the words “not a suspect.” He was almost certain Nathaniel was nothing to do with this, but what was he honestly basing that on? The man’s past character and deeds, certainly, but as far as the present they inhabited, they didn’t know each other. Nathaniel was just another passenger without an alibi - another question mark. He left it off.

“Thank you,” Edward said as they rose. “Please let me know if you think of anything else.”

“Will do!” Nathaniel rose, nodded genially to both, and if one eyelid flickered slightly as he caught Tjelvar’s gaze, no one remarked on it.

*

“Now listen here, young man,” said Effi Weber, rapping her fingers smartly on Edward’s breastplate. “This is all very well but I have a connecting train to catch in Khartoum.”

“Er,” said Edward, looking down at his unlikely assailant. “Sorry, Mrs Weber, but we have a murder to investigate.”

“And that means all the rest of us must be late as well?” she harrumphed, and Tjelvar almost laughed at the unintentional pun. As it was, he disguised it with a cough and was rewarded with a glare sharp enough to pin him into his seat. 

The last of the first-class passengers was Effi Webber, a human woman of no really discernable age, save that it was old enough that she was greying and motherly, dressed in a respectable, worn widow’s black. Tjelvar supposed he had to admire her dedication to the rituals of the past; everyone was mourning in this twilight of civilization. Most people he knew drank or danced or worked to keep their minds from it - it took a certain kind of strength to look head-on at all you had lost and allot it the proper grief.

“We won’t be long, Mrs Weber,” said Edward, and Tjelvar hoped he was right. “Ah, did you know the victim, ma’am?”

“No,” sniffed Effi. “I do not consort with strange young men on trains. Most improper, despite the impression you may have gotten from other women from my home country.”

“You mean Miss Katharina?” asked Edward.

“I mean the Freifrau von Hohenheim of Sponheim, young man.” Effi corrected, sharply. “Just because she has forgotten what she ought to be does not mean the rest of us have.”

“You are familiar with...the Freifrau, Mrs Weber?” asked Tjelvar.

“I do not know the current one,” she replied. “But I knew her late mother. Now  _ there _ was a woman of good breeding - I shudder to think what she would make of her strumpet of a daughter -”

“Er, did you notice anything out of the ordinary earlier this evening, Mrs Weber?” Edward cut across the flow, slightly guiltily. Tjelvar wanted to give him a grateful glance but was slightly too afraid of what Mrs Weber would say if she caught him doing it.

“Apart from the falling standards of what is considered  _ genteel _ ? No.” Mrs Webber fished a large handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped her nose, smudging something dark beneath her nose like a small moustache. Tjelvar knew he shouldn’t stare but immediately had difficulty doing anything else at all.

“Did you notice anyone who, who,” Edward stuttered, also staring at Effi’s top lip. “Who, uh, might have had a problem with the, uh, victim?”

“I have not consorted with anyone else on this train,” she replied. “I was concerned only with catching my next train. I must be in Kinshasa before the end of the week!”

“Ah - Mrs Weber, you’ve got something -” Edward gave up and gestured at her nose and the growing smudge beneath it.

“Oh!” Effi shook her handkerchief out, revealing a blot of some sort of oil that was the culprit. “Well,  _ really _ , this is not at all what you expect from a luxury train service,” She trailed off into her own language, muttering in irritation as she attempted to find an unsullied part of the handkerchief and, finding none, glared expectantly at Edward. Catching on a moment later, Edward patted his pockets for a handkerchief before remembering it was still likely balled up in Bronwyn Jones’ hand and in no state to give aid to anyone else.

“Here, take mine,” Tjelvar came to Edward’s rescue and pulled the fraying paisley pocket square from his jacket and offered it to Effi, who took it between thumb and forefinger as though she had been handed something dead and beginning to smell. Tjelvar gave her his best, most disreputable grin. Her lip curled, but she apparently came to the conclusion that it was this or continue looking like a vaudeville performer.

“Where were you around the time of the murder, Mrs Weber?” Edward asked as she scrubbed at her top lip.

“I was in my cabin, preparing for the dinner service.” She finished cleaning herself up and, to Tjelvar’s mixed relief and annoyance, dropped the sullied pocket square into her handbag. “I emerged as the dinner bell was struck - I almost walked into that rascally young man who had been hovering around the Freifrau - and had barely taken my seat before all the dreadful racket began.”

“Right, thank you,” said Edward. “I think that’ll be all.” As if to underline his point, the train jolted, and began a slow acceleration forward at last. “There we are, Mrs Weber! We’ll have you in Khartoum in no time.”

“See to it that you do,” she replied, before bustling out of the dining car, Youssef trailing in her wake.

*

“Well, that could have gone better,” said Tjelvar, a little while later, flicking through the list of interview notes. They’d established alibis for the train crew; Youssef and Yasmina had been manning the bar, the driver and the stokers hadn’t left the locomotive cabin, Nadiya had been on her own in the guard’s van but she had been contacting the signallers further up the line to keep them updated on the train’s progress and had the logs to prove it. Of the passengers, the only people in the clear were Katharina von Hohenheim and Hugo Steiner, along with Edward and his teenage charges. Everyone else had been on various parts of the train in the run-up to dinner.

_ Including me _ , thought Tjelvar gloomily.  _ I had the means and the motive - for all anyone else knows, I could have slit his throat then sat down for a cocktail. _

“Well, at least we got going again,” said Edward, reading over Tjelvar’s shoulder. “Reckon we should get some rest now, this investigation stuff is well tiring.”

“Hmm,” Tjelvar replied, trying to put enough pieces together to give himself a clear picture, but there were still too many holes. He sighed, tucking his notes away and making to stand. Edward followed his lead, holding the door of the dining car open as they stepped out into the dim corridor.

“What do we need to do next?” asked Edward. “Apart from getting some sleep, I mean. You look well tired, you need a good night’s rest.”

“Thank you, Eddie,” replied Tjelvar. “Well, it’s probably time to look into Archie’s belongings and see if there are any clues there. Honestly I’ll doubt we’ll solve it. We’ve only got a day and a half until we reach Khartoum. Unless something drastic happens, it might be best to just do what we can and hand over the investigation to people trained in it.”

“Well, if anyone on this train can find out, I bet you can.” Edward grinned at him. “I’ll be up early for morning prayers - should I knock for you then?” Edward stopped outside a berth and with a jolt Tjelvar realised it was his, and that Edward had escorted him to his door. Tjelvar almost wanted to laugh - it was such a small gesture, considering the size of the space they were currently confined to, but Edward had walked him home.

“Sounds good, Ed,” Tjevlar smiled, despite himself.. “I don’t know that I’ll be able to sleep, anyway.”

“Nadiya did say she’d make sure we were all safe, Tjelvar.” Edward stepped a little closer, his eyes going gentle. “I’m sure we’ll all be okay.”

Tjelvar looked into that sunny earnestness and felt some things crystallize. It wasn’t only that Edward was  _ here _ , on the same train in the middle of a continent-spanning sandstorm with him - it was that he didn’t seem fundamentally changed since Tjelvar had seen him last. There were more scars and his armour didn’t seem to have the same gleam to it, but the underlying amount of  _ Edward _ , perennially cheerful and excited, seemed utterly unaltered. It was a miracle, Tjelvar supposed, worthy of Apollo. Everyone else in the world was smaller, reduced - Tjelvar saw it in the way their shoulders slumped, in the way they drank too much or laughed too loud or turned to silence. No matter what you might have said about the man’s intelligence, even Edward must have noticed the calamity unfolding around him. And here he was, upright and smiling and somehow still full of hope. It was almost too much to bend one’s mind around.

“We’ll see,” replied Tjelvar, feeling the long hours pull gently at his consciousness. “Goodnight.”

“Night!”

Tjelvar watched him wander down the corridor a short way, waiting until he heard a gentle humming waft back up towards him before turning to go into his own room, still smiling. He stood in the open doorway a moment, the light from the lamps casting their shadows over the small space within. He ached with lack of sleep and the newest weight of grief added to his burden. He briefly considered staying up to comb through his notes to try and shed some light on the murder, but decided that even if he was unlikely to sleep, he should at least spend some time horizontal. He unbuttoned his ridiculous waistcoat and ran a hand through his hair, before pushing the door closed and turning to lock it.

Upon which someone stepped out of the shadow of the door and stabbed him.

Tjelvar saw the looming shape in time to twist partially out of the way of the falling blade - it bit into the top of his shoulder and he let out a yell. A leather-gloved hand clamped over his mouth - Tjelvar desperately scrabbled for the other wrist, grabbing it with both hands. The point wavered a few inches from his cheek - he could feel the handle of his own sword digging into his back and didn’t dare let go to retrieve it. The face was indistinct behind the hilt of the dagger - whoever was doing their level best to murder him had covered their face and cast something that hid their outline, made them dark and nebulous in the unlit gloom of Tjelvar’s cabin.

A push of effort from his attacker - Tjelvar suddenly let go and the point of the dagger buried itself in the wood of the door. As the attacker struggled to free it, Tjlevar hit them as hard as possible in the stomach, pushing desperately for the space to reach his sword and even the playing field. There was a low grunt and the grip slipped from his mouth - Tjelvar had just long enough to take a gulp of breath when the return blow came, hitting hard on his injured arm. Tjelvar gasped, feeling the sword grip slip from between his fingers. He struck out again but this time he met only air. The shadow shied away from him, using his momentum to grab his waistcoat and throw him to the floor.

Tjelvar landed awkwardly, sending another jolt of sick heat through his shoulder. He had just enough presence of mind to roll onto his back when the weight of his attacker pinned him to the ground. One hand clamped around his throat and suddenly that whole weight was behind it. Tjelvar’s fingers scrabbled across for something, anything, that might be a weapon - the one small part of him not laser focussed on survival, on the sudden burning need for breath or the pressure on his throat, felt the attacker’s other hand on his chest and torso, pulling at his shirt, feeling out every fold of fabric,  _ searching _ \- 

The door was wrenched open and, with a wordless bellow, Edward Keystone burst into the room. Even through his fading vision, Tjelvar noted that Edward shimmered in silhouette against the corridor lights. Edward swung - something probably expensive shattered - and suddenly Tjelvar could breathe. There was a second crash and the howl of the storm outside got suddenly louder.

“Tjelvar!” Edward was suddenly next to him, kneeling. “Tjelvar can you hear me?”

“I’m okay,” Tjelvar managed, his voice hoarse. “I’m fine.”

“You’re  _ bleeding! _ ” Edward’s fingers cupped the back of his skull, propping him up. His eyes focussed on the wound on Tjelvar’s shoulder.

“Where did they go?” Tjelvar sat up, swatting Edward’s hands away with one arm, the other too painful to move. “They took - Edward I think they took -” Tjelvar patted himself down - found the solid shape of the hip flask and finally allowed himself to sag backwards against the wall. “They didn’t. False alarm. Ow.”

Edward, meanwhile, had briefly stuck his head into the billowing darkness through Tjelvar’s broken window.

“Well I can’t see them now,” he replied, his tone clipped as he ducked back inside and wrestled the shutters and the blind shut. He turned and knelt next to Tjelvar, passing his hands over Tjelvar’s throat and shoulder, not quite touching as the golden light lit up the room and Tjelvar felt his pain fade to nothing.

“Thank you, Edward,” said Tjelvar, rolling his shoulder out, concern settling in his mind like a grain of sand in a sock as Edward’s expression didn’t change from the slight frown the healing had set it in.

“It’s okay,” he replied, and when his eyes met Tjelvar’s they were serious. “What was so important you were going to bleed to death for it?”

Tjelvar breathed in, intending to make some offhand, rehearsed joke about the hip flask and about how a gentleman should never be separated from his liquor, and instead said “I haven’t told you about why I’m on this train.”

Edward rocked back onto his heels, nodding slightly, still unsmiling. Tjelvar took the hip flask from his pocket and slid it to the palm of his hand. Edward’s frown deepened, then vanished when Tjelvar’s fingers passed over the pattern of dents in its surface and the bottom slid out, revealing a small, tightly-wrapped parcel in the hidden compartment.

“Ed, the truth is I’m on a delivery run,” Tjelvar said. “I’m working for the Harlequins, and this needs to get to Khartoum.”

“What is it?” asked Edward, still looking at the thing in wonder.

“I’m - not going to tell you, Ed.” Tjelvar raised one conciliatory hand at the slightly bruised look he got in return. “It’s not that I don’t trust you - but you can’t lie, and if I don’t tell you then no one can make you tell them, alright?”

“Alright,” replied Edward, mollified but still slightly disappointed. “Is it important? It feels a bit magical.” 

“It might save the world,” replied Tjelvar, the words bitter in his mouth from the wilted hopes of a hundred things gone before that might also have done. “We found it in a tomb in the desert, and I -” He sighed. “Archie was my partner on this run.”

“Oh no, I’m sorry,” Edward’s face creased in concern immediately.

“It’s -” Tjelvar stuttered over the word “fine.” “- not the most important thing right now. Edward, if someone else knows about this, if that’s why they killed Archie, that means trouble.”

“You think they’ll try and hurt you again?” Edward’s hand twitched towards his morningstar.

“They might. But more to the point, it gives everyone on this train a motive to kill him and me.” Edward looked grave.

“Well, that settles it. You’re sleeping with me tonight.” He stood, a hand reaching down to help Tjelvar to his feet.

“I - what?” Tjelvar’s mind turned the sentence over in his mind and found it still consisted of the same words. He put a hand in Edward’s more on autopilot than actual decision and found himself hauled to his feet, standing barely a few inches from Edward.

“Well, if someone wants to hurt you, you’re clearly not safe in here. Not with the broken window and all. There’s room in my bunk for two.” Edward gave him a sunny grin. “Do you have pyjamas or anything?”

“Oh! Right,” said Tjelvar, the world suddenly making sense again. “Yes - my bag’s just there by the desk.” The bag was open when Edward passed it to him - Tjelvar remembered clicking the clasp shut before he left for dinner and felt vaguely grimy at the thought of someone pawing through it.

“Ed - a thought,” he said, catching the paladin’s arm just before he opened the door. “Let’s not tell anyone about this, all right?” He met Edward’s confused frown with a nod. “That way only us and the attacker will know what happened, so if someone mentions it, they’ll automatically be a suspect. Although we should probably tell Nadiya about the window.”

“That’s proper detective stuff, that is,” said Edward, with an expression that was probably meant to be conspiratorial. It didn’t hit at all, but was endearing nonetheless.

“Thank you.” Tjelvar followed him out of the cabin. “And - thank you for offering your room.” Tjelvar should probably have turned it down - he knew he’d been getting some odd looks from the other guests, acting as Edward’s scribe. They’d passed it off as Tjelvar having a reasonable alibi, having been in the bar leading up to the discovery of Archie’s body. If anyone saw him entering Edward’s room after midnight, those were probably only going to get worse.

Tjelvar was turning this over his mind, adjusting the knot of his cravat, wondering quite which were the best words to bring it up to Edward, when Edward simultaneously opened the door to his berth and pushed Tjelvar into a crouch.

A gout of flame blossomed over their heads, and someone inside the cabin yelled “you little  _ shit! _ ”

When Tjelvar dared to look up, Edward was striding into a sparkling melee, plucking his two charges apart and dodging their spells, an expression on his face like this was the fifth time he’d had to do this today.

“Eddie!” yelled one of the halfling boys, the slightly older one, waving a charred book as Edward deposited him back on his bunk. “Look what that bastard did!”

“Told you I could do it,” sniggered the younger one as Edward picked him up by the scruff of his neck.

“Ishak,” sighed Edward, looking at him with disappointment in every line of his face and depositing him in his bunk.

“It’s not my fault!” Ishak waved his arms, immediately avoiding Edward’s face. “You’ve been gone for  _ aaaages! _ And all  _ he’s _ been doing is sitting there reading that stupid book!”

“Ismail,” Edward turned to the other brother, his expression unchanged.

“Ugh, you’re so immature,” muttered Ismail, crossing his arms and turning away. “I shouldn’t expect a  _ child _ to understand actual magic.”

“I understood it well enough to  _ set it on fire _ , donkey-face!”

“I’m disappointed with  _ both of you _ ,” said Edward firmly. “Ismail, you shouldn’t have ignored your brother for all this time. Ishak,” said Edward into his expression of triumph. “You don’t set Ismail’s books on fire. Or anything of his on fire.”

“No one’s any  _ fun _ anymore,” sighed Ishak, throwing himself dramatically backwards in his bunk. A ceasefire apparently declared, Tjelvar stepped into the berth.

“Boys, this is Tjelvar,” Edward waved towards him. “He’s an old -” Tjelvar watched Edward’s mouth shape friend, saw the hesitation and the slightly wary look he cast Tjelvar. Something twisted a little in Tjelvar’s chest at that hesitation.

“Boyfriend?” asked Ismail, in that irritatingly snide way native to teenagers the world over. Edward went scarlet.

“An old friend,” Tjelvar took pity on him. “There was an accident in my cabin - the window broke - and Edward kindly offered to let me sleep on the floor.”

“No need for that, Tjelvar - there’s plenty of room in the big bunk.” Edward gestured at the one free bunk which was indeed the closest thing one could get to a double on a sleeper express.

“Oh so he’s your  _ new _ boyfriend,” said Ismail, to Edward’s ongoing consternation.

“Why are you so obsessed with  _ boyfriends _ , Ismail?” Ishak looked up over the rim of his bunk. “Do you have one? Oooh, do you have a secret boyfriend?"

“Ugh, shut up.” Ismail reached up to the shelf above his head and pulled another book from it.

“Oh great, he’s staring at another stupid book,” groaned Ishak, flopping back onto his pillows.

“Better than staring at your stupid face.”

_ “Boys, _ ” Edward’s voice was firm, but calm. “It’s been a long day. It’s time to get some sleep.”

With various levels of muttering and grumbling, the boys tunnelled beneath their blankets. Ishak curled up immediately, tightening himself into a small ball barely visible above the bedding. Ismail leaned his pillows against his headboard and promised Edward he’d turn the light off after fifteen more minutes of reading.

Edward looked back at Tjelvar and gave the helpless little shrug usually deployed by adults in any situation involving teenagers. Tjelvar just gave him a grin.

“Do you want the inside?” Edward asked. “I’ll be up early for prayers, so if you want to sleep longer, that’s best.”

“I’m not sure I’ll sleep,” replied Tjelvar. “But that does seem most sensible, yes.”

Tjelvar lay under the blankets and watched Edward check every door was locked, that the window catches were thrown, and then finally as he slid into the bed next to Tjelvar, staying at the far edge. It wasn’t easy, but there was a clear gap of air between them. It felt - odd, almost. Tjelvar had slept in many places and in much closer quarters than this in his time in the Harlequins, but there was a significance to this, somehow. Quite why that would be, he couldn’t say - he and Edward had been near-strangers even after Albertville, for all the events of the evening may have united them as a sort of brothers-in-arms. Brothers-in-mystery, perhaps.

“Everything all right?” asked Edward, fluffing up his pillow.

“All fine, thank you,” Tjelvar smiled.

“Great. Well..night, then!”

“Night, Eddie,” he replied as Edward rolled over and settled. Tjelvar did the same, turning to the wall, noting as he did that he could just about feel Edward’s warmth at his back. Tjelvar gazed at the shadows on the wall, meaning to trace the day’s events and tease out any meaning. Instead, he found himself focussing on the way Edward’s breath evened out, on the gentle rocking rhythm of the train, as he quickly slid into a deep, heavy-limbed sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More glorious art by Afarai! I love how tiny the twins are compared to Ed. [See more of her work here](https://afarai.tumblr.com/)


	5. The Evidence of the Luggage, Part 1

The only thing more surprising to Tjelvar than having been asleep at all was waking up in someone’s arms. Specifically, he woke curled around Edward, the paladin’s head nestled in the crook of his shoulder and his arm slung across Tjelvar’s waist. Tjelvar took a steadying breath in, and realised his nose was pressed into Edward’s hair. Inexplicably, he still smelled of roses.

There was a sublimely awkward moment as Tjelvar wondered how to extract himself until he realised it was dawn, and Edward was both awake and trying to do the same. Tjelvar kept his eyes firmly closed and allowed Edward to extricate himself from their embrace. The bed creaked as Edward got out of it, and then creaked again as Edward leaned over to tuck the blankets over Tjelvar’s shoulder and push a stray lock of hair gently out of his face. Tjelvar heard him humming softly as he moved around the cabin, and slipped into the warm pastel space between sleep and waking 

Something of the evening’s softness followed him to breakfast - alone, for the moment. Edward insisted the boys have breakfast in their cabin, probably because there was still a murderer on the loose. Tjelvar considered suggesting that some time to stretch their legs might cure them of some of their more  _ explosive _ cabin fever tendencies, but neither Ishak or Ismail seemed inclined to put up a fight.

So Tjelvar was alone when Nathaniel Skye slid into the seat behind him and said “the paladin, Tjelvar? Didn’t think he’d be your type.”

“And what would you know about my type, Nate?” Tjelvar asked his coffee, eyes still on yesterday’s newspaper in front of him. No new outbreaks reported, news from the front still grim but no new calamities. Something caught his eye about the sandstorms shifting the dunes in the Valley of the Kings, suggesting that new tombs might be uncovered if only someone could survive that long in the sand to uncover them.

“Not nearly as much as I thought,” Nathaniel replied. “Is it the uniform? It’s the uniform, isn’t it?”

“Enchanting though this conversation is,” Tjelvar primly buttered a slice of toast. “You’re breaking about five different protocols right now.”

“You mean,  _ you _ are.” Tjelvar could picture the grin on Nathaniel’s face perfectly. “This trip is pleasure, not business.”

“Pleasure, is it? What exact pleasure are we talking?” Several possibilities flashed across Tjelvar’s mind and he immediately regretted asking.

“Well, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about the paladin. All that handsome jaw.” Nate paused, evidently waiting for some sort of reaction. Tjelvar did not deign to humour him. “But since you’ve got that covered, I thought I might try my hand at getting past her ladyship’s guard dog.”

Tjelvar remembered Hugo’s territorial protectiveness and silently weighed Nathaniel’s wiles against Hugo’s stature. “Ha! Well, I am glad to see your excellent skills being put to a good use.” It would be amusing to watch, anyhow.

“Sourpuss. Just because you have to work. In all seriousness, Tjelvar,” the levity dropped from Nathaniel’s voice. “Let me know if you need my help. Protocol be damned, there’s more at stake right now. I’ll be watching your back, regardless.”

“I will, Nate.” Tjelvar kept his eyes cast down, tried not to let that offer buoy his mood too high. “Thank you.”

“See you in Khartoum for a drink? We’ll pour one out for Archie, poor sod.” Tjelvar glanced through the window and was momentarily surprised to catch the commisterating gaze of Nathaniel’s reflection.

“Sounds good.” Tjelvar fussed with the knot on his cravat, Khartoum feeling very distant.

“Not a problem. It’s never plain sailing on these jobs, is it?” Nathaniel slid out of the chair without saying waiting for a response, reaching the door of the dining car as Katharina was walking through it. He timed it perfectly, holding the door open for the lady in a way that ensured they’d pass each other at the narrowest point of the corridor. Tjelvar watched him turn his most dazzling grin on her, much to Hugo’s consternation.

_ Plain sailing _ . The phrase fidgeted at a loose thread in Tjelvar’s memory, and he pulled until the memories unspooled in his mind’s eye - Archie, in his cups, usually still cantankerous and verbose, until something or someone reminded him of who he was before he was a Harlequin. It was something you learned quickly not to do voluntarily, but sometimes he would get there on his own. He would dry up, every sour little word suddenly silenced into a quiet that felt like the echoing of a blast door slamming shut. It was unnerving, after usually having listened to him nonstop for the past few hours, to see him still like a dark pool and realise there was no penetrating the inky depths before you.

Tjelvar had prodded, just the once, trying to find out what went on behind the silence. He hadn’t gleaned much - Archie had said only that there were things no one should have to see, and that he’d seen most of them in his last berth - midshipman on the  _ Amphitrite, _ as it carried a thousand desperate survivors from Marseille to Algiers.

Tjelvar shuddered. Everyone who’d been involved in the evacuations across the Mediterranean knew about the wreck of the Meritocrat airship  _ Amphitrite _ . Or rather, that it had gone down into the ocean with almost all crew and passengers, the flaming debris catching fires on the ships it sailed over on its final, doomed descent. It was a note of tragedy that stuck out even in that desperate scrabble to escape the oncoming tide of doom - greater even than the outbreak at the docks in St Tropez, than the wildfires on Sicily, than the thousand other disasters, great and small, that had marked those harrowing days.

Perhaps it was time to have another word with ex-Captain Ivanova.

Tjelvar sighed. It looked like he wasn’t quite done being a private investigator yet. It could be worse he supposed, picking up his fedora from the seat next to him - at least he had the right hat for it.

*

“So like, do we just ask her if she killed him?” asked Edward, hopefully.

“ _ No _ , Ed - indirect questioning, remember?” Tjelvar paused in the act of knocking on Galina’s cabin door. “We ask if it’s true that she was arguing with the victim, and then we ask her why.”

“She doesn’t seem evil, though,” Edward looked troubled. “More sort of, like, sad. But more than sad. You know?”

“It’s a common affliction these days,” replied Tjelvar, who knew all too well.

Galina opened the door quickly after the knock, and seemed to deflate slightly when faced with the unlikeliest detective duo in this hemisphere.

“Hullo!” said Edward, sunnily.

“May we come in?” said Tjelvar, when no further gambit seemed forthcoming from Edward.

“Of course,” sighed Galina. She stood aside and let them into the first class cabin. It was almost undisturbed from its pre-occupancy neatness - a worn suitcase stood to one side of the suite’s plush bed, and the worn greatcoat hung on the wall, each line and seam arranged with military sharpness though every hem was fraying. Tjelvar suspected that had he inspected the covers, he’d have found them folded tightly enough he could have bounced a penny off them. And in the middle was Galina Ivanova, struggling not to stand at parade ground rest.

“We had a follow up question, Captain,” said Tjelvar, and watched Galina wince.

“Not a captain anymore, Mr Stornsnasson.”

“Apologies, Ms Ivanova. We had reports of a witness who saw you arguing with the victim yesterday on the train platform - would you care to enlighten us?”

Galina sighed. “All right, I lied. I knew Sterling, or I did once. We served together in the past - he was a cantankerous little bastard, always has been. I tried to bury the hatchet, he didn’t want to, we had a spat.” She shrugged awkwardly, her injured shoulder stiff. “It was just an old bit of Jack Tar drama. Didn’t see the point in incriminating myself because of it.”

“There was bad blood between you?”

“Barely. There was bad blood between Sterling and everyone he served with. Least popular midshipman in the Harlequin Navy, that one.” Galina caught Edward’s disapproving look and hastily looked appropriately mournful. “Still, a fine officer under pressure. Didn’t deserve what he got.”

“Did you notice Mr Sterling having a similar argument with anyone else on the train?” asked Tjelvar, his mind suddenly racing.

“Well - no.” Galina gave a slightly queasy grin. “Would be a bit weird all three ex-shipmates ending up on the same train.”

“Oh that’s not that weird,” said Edward brightly. “I mean, just look at me and-” Tjelvar nudged him hard in the ribs.

“Thank you, Ms Ivanova, you’ve been very helpful.” Tjelvar smiled, and the one he got in return looked wobbly. “Please let us know if you remember anything else.”

“Yes, yes of course. Anything I can do to help.” She stood up, holding the berth door open for them, and the last glimpse Tjelvar got was her tightening jaw as the door closed.

“Hmm.” Tjelvar looked into the middle distance a moment, before turning and walking towards the back of the train.

“Tjelvar? Where are we going?” asked Edward, hurrying to catch him up.

“She lied to us again,” said Tjelvar, without stopping. “She said Archie was the biggest bastard in the Harlequin Navy.”

“You mean there was a bigger one?” Edward looked vaguely daunted by the idea.

“No - Archie was never in the Harlequin Navy. His last berth was the  _ Amphitrite _ \- a Meritocrat ship.” Tjelvar walked a little faster. “And when the  _ Amphitrite _ went down, there were only three survivors - did you hear her when she said “all three ex-shipmates”?”

“Well then.” Edward paused. “I don’t understand.”

“We’re going to the guard van,” TjeIvar replied. “I have a hunch.”

*

“Oh! Mr Keystone!” Youssef’s grin managed to be relieved and worried at once. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

“Uh, you’re welcome?” replied Edward, allowing himself to be herded inside the guard van. Youssef shut the door behind them and then all but dragged Edward and Tjelvar the length of the van.

“I was down here to find something for Nadiya and really I almost didn’t see it but then I  _ did _ and I thought you ought to know right away so I’m glad you arrived when you did…”

Tjelvar fell back, allowing Youssef’s chatter to keep Edward occupied while he cast about the luggage van and found what he was looking for. She’d done a decent job of obscuring it but if you knew the shape of an officer’s sea-chest, you’d could pick it out of, to choose an example at random, a heap of luggage in the cargo carriage of a train. Another little known thing was that officers in the Aeronautics often had their names engraved on the outsides of their luggage. It was easy enough to scratch the paint off, but the sunken letters were there if you knew where to run your fingers.

_ Lada Kuznetsov _ .

It was what he’d expected to find but feeling that name form under his fingers stopped his heart nonetheless.

The wreck of the  _ Amphitirite _ was famous, and no doubt the enormous death toll was part of it; perhaps the greater part of it’s fame was that there were very few who knew exactly what had happened to the ship. As he’d told Edward, there had only been three survivors of the wreck - one, a passenger, had vanished into the chaos of the aftermath, another was Archie, the top-deck lookout, saved by luck alone. The last had been Captain Lada Kuznetsov, the officer in command. Rumour had it that the Navy had taken the time during its own disintegration to court-martial her for the wreck. From the little Tjelvar had been able to glean, it hadn’t stuck and the captain had been given command of a Harlequin dirigible, but that hadn’t stopped the name Lada Kuznetsov being thoroughly besmirched.

_ No wonder she’s going by Galina Ivanova these days _ .

“Tjelvar, there’s something you need to see.” Edward’s voice came from behind him and Tjelvar, having almost that exact sentence on the tip of his tongue, felt slightly cheated. He followed Edward nonetheless, down the length of the guard van to the small barred enclosure at the back of it. There was a safe behind the bars, and in every spare bit of space between bars and floorboard were stuffed boxes and bags of all shapes and sizes, bearing an ostentatious coat of arms.

“The last remnants of the Hohenstein fortune, I presume?” said Tjelvar.

“Er - for now.” Youssef pointed at the metal of the lock. “Someone’s tried to get in, look.”

Tjelvar did, then fought the urge to curse. If Galina Ivanova was Lada Kuznetsov, then she had motive for killing Archie, their fight in the waiting room was explained and two mysteries - the death of Archie Sterling and the wreck of the  _ Amphitritie _ \- could be neatly wrapped up together. However, there were scratches around the lock on the enclosure - apparently Katharina von Hohenstein had been more perspicacious than previously thought.

“Youssef, I don’t suppose you know the contents of the safe and the luggage?”

“No - the Freifrau said that all her luggage was valuable and demanded we lock it up. There was some the other German woman asked us to lock up in here too.” In the corner, amid all the finery, a small pile of plain, practical luggage sat. Youssef looked with a slight sigh at the desk buried beneath half a dozen hat boxes. “It’s made getting to the purser’s desk a nightmare, to be honest. And every time I go back in to check something I swear it’s all moved around just to spite me.” He looked back at Tjelvar and shrugged. “At least she didn’t ask for anything to be kept in the safe.”

Tjelvar frowned.

“I think we’d better go and talk to Katharina herself, Edward. Although…” Tjelvar turned to Youssef. “If I might try something? I think I can set a trap to catch our sticky-fingered friend - will that interfere too much with the running of the train?” After ascertaining that it certainly wouldn’t be any more inconvenient than the mountain of luggage, Tjelvar leaned over the lock and hummed a small enchantment. “Let’s see who we catch, then.”

*

Katharina looked as though she’d have liked to clutch her pearls, only she wasn’t wearing any. And wasn’t that an interesting detail?

“I knew it,” she said, hoarsely, leaning on Sascha Rackett’s arm. Hugo Steiner loomed from the corner, clearly displeased but also clearly on edge. “Oh, Sascha, what am I to  _ do? _ ”

“That’s the reason we’ve come, actually,” Edward leaned forward, radiating earnestness. “We’d like to know what you have they might be wanting to steal. We think it would help us narrow down our suspect list, like.”

Tjelvar leaned back and examined the interior of the stateroom berth. It was about as luxurious as you could expect from a room on a train - Katharina’s presence had made it more so, silk scarves and perfume bottles arranged haphazardly over every viable surface.

“Oh, well, when I fled I only took what Hugo and I could carry,” she said, and rattled off a list of dresses and accessories, ending in “and of course, the family jewels. I have the papers for the estate, but really, my diamonds are all that I have left of the family fortune. I had the stewards lock them away in the safe, of course. Far too valuable to leave lying around.”

Tjelvar saw the frown appear on Edward’s face and gave a brief press on his forearm in warning.

“Escaping Germany must have been extremely difficult for you,” said Tjelvar, making his voice as gentle as possible. Katharina’s eyes misted anew, telling the sorrow of her privations and travails (all suffered while in first class cabins, naturally) between Sponheim and Cairo, how she’d fled with only Hugo to help her carry her many bags, fleeing what she portrayed as just hours before her ancestral castle home was overrun.

“I do hope they managed to board it up in time,” she sighed, and with a start Tjelvar realised that Katharina hadn’t been abandoned by her castle staff - she’d just picked her favourite and left the rest to fend for themselves. It almost made him glad that she’d obviously either forgotten or lost the greater part of her jewels.

It was plain to see when you thought for a few minutes together, even without her lie about the safe. Katharina von Hohenstein was clearly a woman who liked to flaunt what she had, and yet she wasn’t wearing so much as a rhinestone. If the family emeralds were too valuable to wear, then surely she had rubies that would do? If she had really fled with a familial fortune in gems, there would be some glitter on the woman somewhere. Instead, for all her french perfume and well-preserved silk, there was not a bit of gold or glister to be seen.

_ So by inference _ , thought Tjelvar,  _ whoever is trying to rob her is either desperate, dim, or both _ .  _ Not exactly the profile of our disgraced naval captain _ .

“Thank you, madam - we’ll do everything we can to keep you safe,” said Tjelvar, standing and gathering his hat. Edward, face unusually stern, simply nodded at the room and followed him out.

"Are you sure she had an alibi, Tjelvar?" asked Edward, as they walked back down the train towards their berth.

"Yes, why?"

Edward didn't answer, just frowned into the middle distance.

"Just because she's a liar and a coward doesn't mean she's our murderer, I'm afraid.". Tjelvar recalled Katharina’s long tale of perceived suffering, and snorted. "Besides which, she wouldn't get those pretty hands dirty. She'd make Hugo do any necessary murdering."

"You don't seem that surprised," Edward's frown was now one of slight concern.

“Because that’s what always happens, Eddie. I saw it again and again.” Tjelvar felt the anger rise in his throat, wanted to push it down because Edward was not its rightful target. “Every damn stop on the journey south you’d battle through hell and high water only to find the rich were there before you and had somehow managed to bring all their luggage, too.”

“But surely people pulled together - the churches -”

“Were really rather busy at the time.” Tjelvar’s words were clipped. “And oh yes, there was a lot of “we’re all in this together,” but what that actually means when the midden hits the windmill is that the “we” who are neck-deep in crisis only means those too poor to buy their way out of it.”

"Friedrich always told me that when bad things happen, you should look for the helpers.” Edward’s voice had a mulish edge.

“And did he find any?” Tjelvar snapped. "Honestly, Ed, were you paying attention at all through the last year and a half?”

"Uh, no, sorry." To his credit, Edward did genuinely look it. "I was stuck in Rome, y'see."

“Well I -” began Tjelvar, opening their berth door and stepping in before the words could properly register. “Sorry - did you say  _ Rome? _ ”

“Rome is  _ awful _ ,” said Ishak from the top bunk, and it was almost enough to distract Tjelvar from the rude words he’d written in glimmering lights on the ceiling.

“You were there too?” Tjelvar looked between the three of them, Edward looking slightly guilty, Ishak looking like a kid who’s just learned about medieval torture methods and can’t  _ wait _ to tell you, and Ismail’s face full of a careful blankness. “Ed, if you don’t mind - what happened after Albertville?”

Tjelvar got the story in bits and pieces, mostly from Edward’s hesitant and meandering narrative; his accidental breaching of the Cult of Mars cordon, his subsequent entanglement in the strangeness of space and time in Rome, the ruin of the ancient world and the way the sun hung in the sky, baleful and cold, the severing of his connection to Apollo and the awful consequences of trying to reconnect.

“I didn’t do that again,” said Edward, staring unfocussed out the window at the swirling sand. “It were like - it were  _ evil _ , I knew that, but reaching out for it like that just made you feel the worst - like Apollo wasn’t just not there, but dead and all the gods were weeping for him.”

And so Edward had struggled on, entirely alone and lost through the wreckage of what had once been the centre of an empire, his faith in being able to smite evil the last thing to be sapped by his growing exhaustion.

“There’s just not much meat on a frog Tjelvar. No energy to be got from it. And then there’s its face, looking at you like it’s sad at you cooking it.”

Until, one day, a well-dressed halfling had stepped out from behind a pile of rubble and said hello.

“That’s our brother, Hamid,” said Ismail, piping up for the first time, a grin on his face. “He’s, like,  _ amazing _ at magic. When he comes home he’s going to teach me.”

“He’s going to teach both of us,” said Ishak, stung.

“Pfft. You’re too young to learn  _ real _ magic.”

“We’re the  _ same age _ , you camel-fucking -”

“ _ Ishak! _ ”

And then there was whatever the  _ other _ realm had been - Ishak had been hustled off there, thrown in a small room and left to worry for a few hours until Hamid and his friends arrived. Then they’d fought their way out, past strange cowled things that shrieked and spat magic, although they shattered when struck very hard by a tired angry paladin.

“You should have seen it,” Ishak’s grin was wide. “Golden Boy hit that thing so hard it just... _ bam _ !” Tjelvar glanced at Edward, who looked down at the floor, his cheeks a little pink.

They’d fled the realm of shadows, bursting victoriously out into Rome, to find the world had left them behind. Tjelvar looked between the twins’ faces, from Ishak’s uneasy restlessness to Ismail’s shuttered steadiness.  _ They must have been impossible to tell apart before this _ , he thought.  _ What a difference a year and a half makes _ .

“And I wanted to go back to the Church of Apollo, since I’m a proper Paladin now and all,” said Edward, fidgeting absently with the straps of his bracer. “But there aren’t - they’re a bit busy now, and I can’t find anyone else I know. Ms Al-Tahan was nice to keep me on to look after these two.”

Somewhere the detective in Tjelvar noted with mounting panic that if these two were children of the Al-Tahan family, then that added another layer of possible motive and machination onto the events of the train. The Al-Tahans were one of the few families who’d retained enough wealth and influence to demand a ransom from.

The rest of Tjelvar was focussed on Edward’s face, which suggested Edward knew why he couldn’t find anyone he knew. Paladins breathed reverent air - they were hailed as heroes, as the shining line between the remaining free peoples of the world and the darkness that threatened to overrun them. They were all but worshipped, and Tjelvar knew better than most what happens to those placed on pedestals. Either they were dragged down again, or else their supplicants turned the thrones to altars. Paladins left for the front, flowers and favours raining down on them, and the trains returned empty. A paladin’s loved ones would wave them off with pride and love until the train vanished around a bend in the track, then they would return home and begin referring to their paladin as though they were already dead. It was easier that way.

“Edward,” Tjelvar began, guilt stirring acid in his gut, unsure of what his next words were going to be but aware of his need to say them. Edward looked up at him, his blue eyes dark with a depth that most people wouldn’t have believed them capable of.

“Is it lunch yet?” asked Ismail, cutting flatly across Ishak’s description of their quarantine in Cairo.

“I’ll go and ask Youssef for a tray, shall I?” Tjelvar stood, aware of the heat in his own cheeks and needing a moment of air to gather his thoughts. Tjelvar caught up his hat and left, taking in as many of the boys’ lunch demands as he could and noticing that Edward didn’t say a word.

He arrived in the dining car to find it full - indeed, a scan of faces suggested there was no one missing from the train. The atmosphere was...loaded, to say the least. Everyone looked sidelong at everyone else, and all eyes flickered to Tjelvar as he stood waiting for Youssef to load sandwiches and cake onto a tray.

Movement caught his eye - Galina Ivanova (or Lada Kuznetzov, depending on when you’d met her) twitched her head towards him, her gaze flickering over the carpet where he stood. Tjelvar tried to catch it, glancing at the bar, noticing Bronwyn and Yasmina chatting merrily and Nathaniel shooting a dazzling smile at Katherina as he sipped his wine. Tjelvar wondered whether to approach her when it seemed Galina came to a decision, downed what looked like a double bourbon and got unsteadily to her feet. She weaved slightly as she made her way to Tjelvar - he couldn’t help but look up in some concern. It had been only an hour or so since they spoke but from the way her eyes unfocussed, she may have been drinking for all of it.

“Mr - Stornsnasson,” she said, seeming to have some trouble forming the words. “I need - tell you - I - nnn-” Her mouth moved silently a few more times, her chest beginning to heave, her eyes wide. Her hand reached out, grasped Tjelvar’s sleeve and clung as terror mounted in her eyes.

“Mr Syed, fetch Edward immediately,” hissed Tjelvar, his hands coming up to Galina’s shoulders - they trembled through her jacket, thinner and more delicate than her stern posture suggested.

“What’s going on?” said Youssef, just as Galina’s eyes rolled up in her head and her knees buckled beneath her. Tjelvar caught her before she crashed through the nearest table and lay her gently down on the carpet.

“Fetch Edward,  _ now _ ,” he snapped as the whispers in the dining room rose to a horrified chatter. He pulled his coat off, tucking it behind her head as her limbs began to twitch and stiffen intermittently. Edward arrived at a run a few minutes later, but by then Tjelvar knew it was too late. Edward lay on hands, the golden glow filling the carriage, but Galina’s form went limp, her chest still.

“What happened?” whispered Edward, looking in horror between Galina and Tjelvar. The hubbub in the dining car erupted into clamour as Katharina shrieked.

Tjelvar didn’t reply, although he knew the symptoms of cyanide poisoning well enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger!art by Afarai - [See more of her work here](https://afarai.tumblr.com/)


	6. The Racketteer

What followed was barely-controlled chaos.

Katherina von Hohenstein had fully fainted, having to be transported back to her cabin wrapped in Hugo’s cloak and carried. The stewards hurried everyone else out of the dining car back to their cabins before returning to scrub the place clean, bundling up Galina’s body and taking it away.

Ishak and Ismail began to complain when Tjelvar and Edward returned without any lunch, but fell quiet as soon as the word  _ “poison” _ was mentioned.

“Who did  _ that _ , then?” asked Edward, sat next to Tjelvar on the edge of the bunk. He gazed into the middle distance, brow furrowed in concern and Tjelvar had to fight the urge to take his hand and run a reassuring thumb over the knuckles.

“Unless I miss my guess, it could have been anyone in that dining car.” Tjelvar mused. “It would have had to have been given to her in the last thing she drank before she died - cyanide works instantly when ingested.”

“But we thought  _ she _ did the murdering,” said Edward. “There can’t be two murderers on this train, can there?”

“I really hope not, Ed,” replied Tjelvar. “We’ll run out of victims before we find the murderer at this rate.” Tjelvar watched Edward’s eyes flick up to the boys, saw the fear and determination flit across his face and wished he hadn’t said it. Edward might not be one to pick up on dark humour but he understood the severity of the situation well enough.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, giving Edward a small, tired smile. “Tasteless comment. And - and for snapping, earlier. I didn’t know about Rome.”

“You’re okay, Tjelvar,” Edward smiled back, warmer and wider than Tjelvar really thought he deserved. “Way Ismail tells it, everyone’s had a difficult time while we were gone. Everyone goes a bit ragged around the edges in times like this.” Edward did what Tjelvar had not and caught hold of his fingers, squeezed softly. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that the god Edward had dedicated himself to was Apollo. Apollo who brought the sunlight and drove away darkness and evil; Apollo who also soothed illness and injury, who blessed those devotees who turned their faces towards the heavens with gentle, healing sunlight.

The strange little sunburst was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Mr Keystone, Mr Stornsnasson,” Nadiya’s face was stern as they opened the door. “Looks like your trap sprang.”

*

“We found him when we came to lay poor Ms Ivanova down,” Nadiya muttered to them as they walked into the luggage van. “Seems he decided to take advantage of the hubbub to do a little light thieving - it would have been easy enough for him to spot an opportunity, his is the closest berth. Also, we’ve had a dig around. Looks like his papers are forged.”

The con artist currently known as Sascha Rackett sat resentfully on the floor of the luggage van, his hand stuck firmly to the lock of the secured area. Tjelvar quelled a small vicious smile at a trap well set.

“Look,” he sighed, as Tjelvar and Edward came to stand in front of him. “I can explain.”

“Why Galina Ivanova?” Tjelvar asked, looking imperiously down at him. “Did you bear a grudge, or did you decide she was as legitimate a target as any of us?”

“Wait - what?” Sascha Rackett looked between Tjelvar’s raised eyebrow and Edward’s grim countenance in a sudden panic. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“Convenient it happened when it did, then,” said Tjelvar. “Almost a tailor-made distraction, one guaranteed to keep everyone in their cabins and the crew occupied cleaning the dining car.”

“Well, no, you’re looking at this all  _ wrong _ , friend,” Sascha’s smile was nervous.

“And what did Archie Sterling do, hmm?” The pH of Tjelvar’s voice plunged. “Catch you trying the lock to a compartment that wasn’t yours?”

“No - look,  _ no _ . I had nothing to do with that either.” There was a sheen on Sascha’s forehead that might have been sweat.

“And yet, two people are dead and you’re here, trying to steal from Katharina von Hohenstein.” Tjelvar leaned just a little closer, looming as Sascha shrank backwards. “So what  _ did _ you have something to do with, Mr Rackett?”

“You even lied about your name,” said Edward, flatly.

“Okay, look,” he said, the words falling out of him like cards from a bad magician’s sleeve. “My name’s Figgis, Herbert Figgis, and I  _ was _ trying to rob her nibs. Was trying to sweet-talk my way into her cabin, you catch my drift, only that big lad she’s got with her kept getting in the way. Gave that up as a bad job when that other fella started making himself charming and decided to take a more direct route.” He looked pleadingly up at them. “I was going to sneak down here when everyone was busy with dinner tonight, it’s empty this end of the train that time of night. I just thought, when that poor girl croaked, it was as good a time as any. I’m a liar and a thief, I’ll cop to that, but I’m not a  _ murderer _ .” His eyes were wide and desperate. “You have to believe me.”

“And what else did you try and steal along the way, Mr Figgis?” Tjelvar’s shoulder twinged with the memory and he did his best not to roll it.

“What else?” Figgis looked genuinely baffled. “What the fuck else is there? Flotsam and jetsam, the rest of us - no one else got lucky enough to have anything left worth stealing.”

“Why did you call yourself Sasha Rackett?” asked Edward, bluntly.

“After this girl I knew once,” shrugged Figgis. “She got my place on an adventuring party. Thief type, you know. Thought if she was still around, coppers might pin it on her.”

“They wouldn’t have,” said Edward, shortly. “You didn’t even spell her name right.”

Tjelvar sent a quelling glance at him, but Edward’s eyes were already back in the middle distance, tracing something on the screens of his mind.

“You believe me, though, right?” Figgis smiled, over-hopefully in Tjelvar’s opinion, up at them. “I’m obviously not a good person but I haven’t killed anyone.”

Tjelvar sighed. Annoyingly, he did believe Figgis. His weaselly excuses had seemed genuine, as had his bafflement at Tjelvar’s reference to the attack in his cabin. Figgis fit the profile of hopeful and largely dim thief who hadn’t noticed that Katharina was as broke as the rest of them. He didn’t fit the profile of any sort of determined and undetectable killer stalking the carriages. Tjelvar would have liked it very much if he did - he’d have liked to tie this mystery neatly up, to have a drink with Edward this evening, to have had a gentle evening and an untroubled night’s sleep. 

“Whatever I think, I’m turning you over to the train crew. The authorities in Khartoum will deal with you. If you’re in agreement, Edward?” Tjelvar looked at him and the grim angle of his jaw.

“Yeah.” Edward’s voice was still flat, and that sent its own spike of concern in the ever-present churn in Tjelvar’s gut.

“I don’t think he did it all, Tjelvar,” said Edward, as they left Nadiya and Youssef to it and walked back up the corridor.

“No, I don’t think so either,” said Tjelvar. “Although, Ed, he seemed to have some sort of effect on you.” Edward’s shoulders hunched a little, his eyes sliding to the side. “Are you...alright?”

“Not all of us made it back from Rome,” blurted Edward. “There was - I think we went between planes? And we were standing in a circle and holding hands and when we went between worlds it felt strange and not right and I lost hold of her hand and when we got back to this world, she wasn’t there.”

“Who?” asked Tjelvar, softly.

“This woman who helped me out of Rome. She was well sneaky, barely made a sound in the shadows.” Edward smiled, and it didn’t hit right. Something rusty and out of use creaked in Tjelvar’s chest. “Her name was Sasha Rackett. There wasn’t a C in it, and she was  _ good _ . Not like him. And I - I didn’t keep hold of her hand well enough.”

“Edward,” said Tjelvar softly, because he didn’t quite know what to say. It’s not that he didn’t understand - the months since they’d last seen each other had been a patchwork of those moments, of things not held tight enough, not given enough attention until suddenly they’d slipped between his fingers and, piece by piece, he’d been set adrift. Figgis had been right about one thing, at least - they were detritus on the stream, carried along this dark current to what sounded, in the quiet of a long night, like a vast oncoming cataract. Tjelvar had been mourning the loss of his whole world for so long he had almost forgotten how to feel one unique grief. “I’m sorry about your friend,” he settled on, gently, trying to give the bland words weight and meaning by placing his hand on Edward’s arm and squeezing gently until the paladin looked up with overbright eyes. “But if I know you, Eddie, I know you did everything you could.”

“It wasn’t enough,” he said, voice almost hoarse.

“Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes the only thing we can do is try to do better next time.” Edward let out a long breath, then placed one hand over Tjelvar’s. When at last he smiled again, it was still edged with sorrow but there wasn’t the same strangeness to it.

“All right. Let’s get to doing that, then,” Edward said, a brief scrub of his eyes later. “Not-Sasha didn’t know about whoever tried to hurt you, so we still have to find out who that was. I’m not going to be not enough to keep you safe, too.” 

He strode off, pulling himself into the upright, square-shouldered poise Tjelvar had mentally labelled “Paladin Default,” leaving Tjelvar himself blinking in his wake as the meaning of the last few seconds sunk in.

*

There was something of a carnival atmosphere in the dining car at dinner. Tjelvar’s little party went to dine together - the twins had gone along with keeping themselves quiet and discreet for almost all of the journey, but when Tjelvar and Edward had got back to the cabin there was a pyrotechnic argument going on and the twins agreed to behave if Edward let them out of the berth, just for the length of the meal.

It might even have been quite nice - the rest of the patrons had taken Figgis’ arrest at face value and the mood had lifted significantly, enough for everyone to trust their food and drink and relax. There was a feeling that the storm had passed. However, there was also quite a lot of noise from a few booths over, where Katharina was celebrating her apparent victory over the Enemies of the Great and Ancient House of Hohenstein.

The wine had been flowing freely, and thus so also were the words. Tjelvar was doing his best not to listen, but anyone within probably a mile radius could hear the minute details of how Katharina had seen through Figgis’ disguise, how she’d known all along what he was about and how no one would ever outsmart her by virtue of her aristocratic intelligence. Even Nathaniel was keeping his distance, ardour apparently overcome by second-hand embarrassment. Hugo had his lady all to himself at last though, so at least someone seemed happy.

“This is just as boring as the cabin,” sighed Ishak, and Tjelvar couldn’t disagree. He could, however, see an obvious set-up coming and therefore was unsurprised when Ishak gave him a sidelong look and said “so, what do you actually, you know, do, Tjelvar?”

“Drink, mostly,” replied Tjelvar, keeping his face deliberately neutral and enjoying the rolled eyes he got in return.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Wasn’t aware this was twenty questions.” Tjelvar took a sip of wine and enjoyed the frustrated look he got in return.

“We could play that?” Ismail said, idly turning a page. It would have almost been convincing if Tjelvar hadn’t caught the small wink he’d sent his twin.

“Nope.” Tjelvar openly grinned as both twins sighed in annoyance.

“Truth or dare?” offered Ishak.

“Hmm. I’ll meet you in the middle,” said Tjelvar. “We’ll play two truths and a lie, and you have to go first.”

“Okay!” Ishak immediately brightened. “Uhh, I’ve got three brothers, um, I can make a magical fireball, and -”

“Lie,” Ismail cut across him. “You can barely light a match.”

“First point to Ismail,” said Tjelvar, smiling despite Ishak’s scowl. “Which means he goes next.”

Ismail shrugged, put his book down and said, “I first rode a camel when I was three, I actually  _ can _ cast a spell that makes a fireball, and I kissed Noor Al-Andalus at the summer formal this year.”

“ _ That’s _ a lie,” snorted Ishak. “I don’t care how tall you got, Noor wouldn’t let you get within three feet of her.”

“You don’t know that!” Ismail went pink.

A truce was eventually called between the twins, reasoning they had the unfair advantage of having spent the majority of their lives in each others’ presence. They therefore faced off against Tjelvar, Edward taking the role of referee due to the fact that as a paladin, he was unable to lie and therefore disqualified.

Dinner came and went, giving each side a chance to think of some outlandish truths and unbelievable lies. The break between the main meal and dessert got Tjelvar a demerit for proposing three things that were actually true (only on a technicality, when it came to the assertion that he’d been a cleric of Dionysus - he’d done it to gain access to the entrance to a ruined shrine, but he’d taken the vows and lasted about a week before being wrathfully defrocked.) The boys had their heads together, whispering and giggling about their next round, when there was a polite cough from the side of their table.

Bronwyn Jones stood there, colour back in her pretty cheeks, yellow gingham bows in her beard this evening. She smiled shyly at both, and held out a clean and neatly pressed square of material. It took Tjelvar a moment to recognise Edward’s handkerchief.

“Thank you, Mr Keystone,” she said, her voice lilting. “You were such a help to me - to all of us.”

“Oh - not a problem, Ms Jones,” Edward replied, taking the material gently back and Tjelvar felt the heat across the skin of his neck as he watched their fingers brush. “Just doing paladin stuff, you know.” Edward’s smile was awkward - they had agreed not to tell the passengers about their doubts on Figgis’ guilt and Edward was having some difficulty circumnavigating the truth.

“Still,” Bronwyn smiled sweetly and Tjelvar did his best not to acknowledge the stab of irrational anger. “Some of us on this train know who is really the hero of this story.” She beamed radiantly at Edward, curtseyed to the table, and left.

“So, Ed,” Ismail propped himself up on one elbow, grinning. “A new boyfriend  _ and _ a new girlfriend. Busy trip for you.”

“I - that’s not -” spluttered Edward, going scarlet, while Tjelvar laughed, hiding his own blush in sipping his wine. He looked over the dining car, feigning indifference as Ismail grinned incorrigibly at Edward, and met the eye of Effie Weber, who was looking at the table with a strange, almost hungry gaze. Her eyes went hard as they met Tjelvar’s, and she drew herself up to her fairly diminutive height and marched over to their table.

“In my day, children were seen and not heard,” she glowered down at the twins. “My daughters would  _ never _ have been allowed to behave in such a disgraceful manner.”

“Well, a lot has changed in the last hundred years,” muttered Ishak. Ismail snorted and Edward grinned, until he met Effie’s icy glare and remembered he was meant to be the adult.

“My apologies, Mrs Weber,” said Tjelvar, keeping his voice as conciliatory as possible. “We’ll try and keep the volume down from now on.”

“Good,” she snapped, before sweeping - and there was more crinoline than woman, so it was an impressive sweep - out of the dining car.

“And she’s still got my handkerchief,” muttered Tjelvar into the silence, earning a snigger from the twins.

“Don’t see why she’s got her knickers in a twist,” said Ismail. “That Lady Katharina’s making  _ way _ more noise than we are.”

The twins were almost civil to each other through dessert and then the preparations for bed. While Edward and Tjelvar waited in the corridor to give them some space to wash and change, Edward broke the companionable silence by asking “Mrs Weber’s daughters- they’re dead, aren’t they?”

“Dead, or blue-veined.” Tjelvar nodded. It was such a common story that he hadn’t even thought to ask. He’d heard the past tense, noted her mourning clothes, and assumed. Edward nodded.

“I know everyone thinks we caught the murderer, but I think we should keep watch tonight.”

“Agreed,” replied Tjelvar. “Shall I take first watch and wake you at dawn?”

Edward insisted on being woken an hour before dawn, and Tjelvar privately resolved to wake him half an hour before. They settled in, the lights clicking off one by one until only Tjelvar’s small reading light remained. The night passed slowly, the train rattling over the long miles of desert, the background to the ambient noises of deep, even breaths and gentle rustles of bedsheets.

The small cry was quiet enough that Tjelvar couldn’t place it at first, jolted out of his book by the discordant sound. The trembling breath that followed it was unmistakable, though - it came from Edward’s throat. Tjelvar looked over at him, seeing his sleep-calm face crease, his eyes flickering beneath his eyelids, hands suddenly gripping the pillows. He muttered something voiceless but anguished, sleeping form going tense.

“Eddie.” Tjelvar had sat forward and grasped Edward’s shoulder before he could think rationally about it. “Ed, wake up. It’s okay, it’s just a nightmare.”

Edward’s eyes fluttered open, wide in fear and anticipation before they focussed on Tjelvar. There was a beat of confusion until Edward dropped back onto the pillow, suddenly boneless.

“Tjelvar,” he said, voice scratchy with sleep. “Is it dawn yet?”

“No, we’re still a few hours off.” Tjelvar went to sit back down, then drew his chair a little closer to Edward. “You looked like you were having a bad dream.”

“I was,” Edward gazed at the ceiling. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said Tjelvar. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Edward drew a breath in, paused, then shook his head.

“Alright then. Get some more sleep, and I’ll be here to wake you at dawn.”

Edward finally looked up at him with a smile small and exhausted, before letting a long weary breath out and settling back onto his pillows. Tjelvar noted as Edward settled that he’d inched closer, one arm hanging slightly off the mattress. It wouldn’t take much, Tjelvar thought, for him to drop one hand from his book and slip his fingers between Edward’s. He didn’t, although he did keep one ear on Edward’s breathing, listening to it go soft and steady. He’d also evidently been keeping an eye out, because he noticed Edward’s eyelashes flutter as he began to dream again. Tjelvar watched his sleeping face a moment, remembering a gentle hand tucking him in, smoothing hair out of his half-dreaming face. Briefly checking that both twins were fast asleep, Tjelvar reached over and ran the backs of his fingers across Edward’s hair. Tjelvar had no idea if that was an effective way to chase away nightmares or just a bit of wishful thinking, but Edward’s face stayed peaceful and his sleep untroubled until Tjelvar shook him softly awake in the pre-dawn light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sublime art by Jaliuboots. Again, the size of Ed next to the twins is _adorable._ Find them on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/the.one.the.only.mimi.q/), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/QTheonetheonly), and [tumblr](https://theonetheonlymimiq.tumblr.com/).


	7. The Evidence of the Luggage, Part 2

Tjelvar’s first emotion on waking was a kind of petulant displeasure. He had the sensation of being torn from a pastel-hued and pleasant dream where he was curled around a sweetheart and awoke in a bed he was alone in. He opened his eyes to see Edward, the source of the waking, standing over him.

_ Well, I can fix that problem quickly _ , he thought blearily before the world returned a little bit more and he could put things into their proper context. It was midmorning, judging by the light, and Edward was fully dressed and deeply concerned.

“Morning Ed,” he groaned. “Don’t tell me there’s been another murder.”

“Er,” said Edward, stalling.

“Oh  _ gods _ .” Tjelvar briefly brought his hands to his face. “What happened?”

“Ms Nadiya just came by. She says Mr Youssef said he’d thought of something and went running off to the baggage car to find something to show us. He hasn’t come back and now she can’t find him.”

“Right,” sighed Tjelvar, pulling back the covers.

Youssef had apparently been finishing the breakfast service and chatting to a somewhat hungover Katharina when he’d got an odd look on his face, according to Nadiya. He’d told Yasmina that he’d thought of something that might show someone was out to target Katharina after all and had hurried off to the guard van. He then hadn’t answered the intercom when Nadiya had asked him to come to the staff car at the front of the train and when she’d gone to check, Nadiya had found the baggage car empty. The train had been quietly searched, and there was no trace of him anywhere onboard. Tjelvar’s mood was black, concern mixed with exhaustion. It didn’t help matters that his last clean outfit involved red-and-gold brocade and sleeves with  _ frills _ .

Edward pushed the door to the baggage car open and Tjelvar had just enough time to wish he’d had a coffee before he had to follow Edward inside.

"Hello?" called Edward, morning star raised and ready. Nothing in the car stirred. Tjelvar stepped to his side and drew his own sword.

"Mr Syed?" he called, and was answered only by the rattle of the rails.

They shared a glance, a question clear on Edward's face. Tjelvar shrugged, eyes scanning the car. Piles of luggage loomed, each misaligned edge and corner casting its own shadow. Edward nodded grimly, seeming as reluctant to speak as Tjelvar was, then stepped forward. Tjelvar laid a hand briefly on his forearm  _ \- be careful - _ before following.

They walked the length of the baggage car, each tread careful, peering into every nook. Nothing. Not a single sign of Mr Syed or what might have happened to him.

"He might be out the back?" said Edward, gesturing to the door of the carriage and the small open air platform beyond it. They checked - the door was unlocked, and the platform beyond empty, nothing but the tracks unspooling beneath them and vanishing into the dust cloud as they sped across the desert.

Youssef wasn't on the carriage roof, holding on to its sides or even, at least as far as Tjelvar could tell, dangling dangerously close to the wheels with Edward's grip nerve-tight on his collar, underneath it.

"So either he jumped," said Tjelvar, getting back to his feet. "Or he vanished."

"He could be hiding?" suggested Edward, without much conviction.

"Yes, but  _ why _ ? As far as we know he came down here for some passenger details and then just didn't come out again." Tjelvar ducked back into the carriage, frowning as his eyes readjusted to the shapes in the gloom. "Well - we know he left the dining car - who’s to say he made it here?”

“Wouldn’t Ms Nadiya have found him before if something happened to him on the train?”

“I suppose.” Tjelvar scanned the piles of luggage again. "Huh. That’s odd.” Tjelvar nodded towards the gated section, where the barred door stood just slightly ajar. He walked over to it, opened it slightly, stuck his head in.

“Mr Syed?” Nothing moved. Tjelvar edged in, moving in the narrow spaces left between the safe, the desk, and the precipitous piles of von Hohenstein luggage, salted through with small seams of the plainer, sturdier stuff that was presumably Mrs Weber’s. A shuffling let him know that Edward had come in behind him.

“Leave the door open, Ed,” he called over his shoulder, unsure why. There was something unsettling about the prospect of getting stuck in here, although arguably it would be the easiest place to get rescued from. It had an intercom terminal and the emergency telegraph - they could summon rescue from miles around.

“See anything?” asked Edward, his morningstar still raised, eyes glancing from side to side.

“Nothing obvious.” Tjelvar scanned the piles of luggage again. "Eddie, tell you what - let's have a look inside any of these big enough for someone to hide in."

"Do you think he's in here, then?" asked Edward, poking dubiously at a trunk with his foot.

"I think we'd better check," he replied, walking to a chest and crouching in front of it. It was a big, heavy thing, certainly large enough to hold the halfling conductor, and sealed with a battered padlock. Tjelvar checked quickly over his shoulder; Edward was shifting some suitcases about, eyes focussed on things other than Tjelvar. Tjelvar quickly sheathed his sword and exchanged it for a small set of discrete and interestingly-shaped pieces of metal.

_ Not that picking this lock is evil _ , thought Tjelvar, slightly guilty and irritated with himself at being so.  _ I just don't want to get into comparative ethics right now. _

Tjelvar looked back and paused. The padlock looked bigger, shinier, newer. He was half inclined to write it off as a trick of the light but an instinct that had carried him through many a trap-riddled ruin made him look closer. As he did, peering closer at the lock, two small, poison-green eyes rippled open in the surface of the trunk.

Slightly too late, Tjelvar noticed a scuff mark on the floor, next to a small drop of something that might have been blood.

" _ Edward _ ," he said, his voice low and urgent, not daring to move even so far as to grip his sword.

"A little busy," came the slightly strained reply, curtailed by a low, menacing growl. "One of the chests isn't really a chest."

"Neither's this one," said Tjelvar, beginning to shuffle away. As he did, another set of eyes opened, and then another. By the time his retreating back met Edward's coming the other way, a dozen eyes were glaring at them, hungry and intent. A violin case chittered at them, long teeth where its zip should be.

"Edward," breathed Tjelvar. " _ Run! _ "

They broke at the same time, turning towards the entrance. Tjelvar found himself clipped across the shins by something, felt a wooden lid snap at him. He swung down desperately as thick tendrils, patterned and swirled like silk scarves, shot out and tried to wrap themselves around his legs. Teeth like shards of mirror glistened, ground hungrily as the mimic dragged itself forward.

“Tjelvar!” Edward, a few steps from the door, turned around to see him cornered, and before Tjelvar could yell to him to get himself to safety he’d started back. A steamer trunk dragged itself upright, launched itself at Edward and slammed into him with a crunch of bark and steel, pinning him against the bars of the enclosure. Edward yelled as the mimic’s teeth bit down on his shoulder, his grip on his morningstar faltering. The straps on the trunk lengthened, turned fluid, wrapped themselves tight around Edward’s chest, looping up around his neck before pulling tighter, constricting, drawing him into its gaping, ravenous maw.

Tjelvar didn’t know if he’d meant to shout something as he stabbed down through the lid of the mimic menacing him, but the roar he let out was guttural and wordless, drowning out the high-pitched shriek of the mimic. Tjelvar vaulted onto its lid - a hat box snarled, wrapped its ribbons around his boot - Tjelvar punted the thing against the wall and leaped onto the steamer trunk.

It rocked as his weight hit it, but only barely loosened its grip on Edward. Edward’s breath stuttered to a choke, his fingers clutching at the sap-coated tendrils squeezing his throat. Tjelvar braced himself against the bars and hacked down, sword sticking and slipping but finally snapping through one tentacle and then another. Edward gasped and the mimic reared back - Tjelvar pushed his back to the bars and kicked out double-footed - the steamer trunk toppled backwards, landing on a vengeful chest and flattening the squeaking violin case. Tjelvar threw Edward’s arm around his shoulders, grabbed the morningstar from where it had fallen, and all but threw himself through the opening in the bars, turning to slam the door shut behind him and shoot the bolt home. Edward slipped from his grip, dropping to the ground behind him. The steamer trunk threw itself against the bars, snarling, straps flailing through the bars, missing Tjelvar as he danced back out of its way.

His spike of victorious viciousness was cut off as Edward drew a hoarse and shaking breath from the floor.

“Eddie!” Tjelvar threw himself to his knees and then to all fours, hands on either side of Edward’s head. Edward’s eyes were closed, his breaths rapid, livid marks around his neck and blood pooling around the edges of his breastplate. “Edward, are you alright?” Tjelvar brought one hand to Edward’s neck, fingers fluttering over his skin, trying to assess whether any bones were broken, any airways crushed. Edward’s eyes flew open as Tjelvar touched him, the colour beginning to return to his pale cheeks.

“Tjelvar - I’m fine,” he croaked, one hand coming to Tjelvar’s shoulder.

“Don’t move, Ed, you might have broken something, here -” Tjelvar caught Edward’s other hand and brought it gently to his throat. “Heal there.”

“Tjelvar,” Edward swallowed, cheeks getting pinker by the second but making no concerted effort to escape. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

“I’m not,” said Tjelvar, firmly. “Please, Eddie? For me, if nothing else.”

Edward gulped again, then the familiar golden light pooled over his skin and some of the livid markings died down.

“Thank you,” said Tjelvar, smiling down at him, eyes raking across Edward’s face and shoulder and finding them satisfactorily whole. A moment passed in that stillness before Tjelvar realised that he had leaned close enough to Edward that some loose strands of his own hair were brushing the other man’s face, and he sat up. Something odd bubbled up his spine as he moved away from Edward and his own cheeks heated to match Edward’s. He opened his mouth to say something and found only a stutter on his tongue.

“ _ Tjelvar _ ,” hissed Edward, saving him. Tjelvar looked - a hatbox sat just outside the locked enclosure, close enough to strike. Tjelvar grabbed his sword from where he’d dropped it and swung wildly at the box, hitting it squarely and hard and shattering it into a confetti of cardboard and peacock feathers.

“Oh,” said Tjelvar. “Looks like that one was real.” 

Behind him, Edward had propped himself against the wall of the baggage car and had his head bowed as his shoulders shook.

“Ed?” Tjelvar got to his feet and tentatively approached, reaching on hand out for his shoulder. Edward looked up at him, face contorted in silent laughter.

“What’s funny?” Tjelvar asked, although he could feel his face start to match Edward’s.

“We just got attacked by luggage,” said Edward through his giggles, and Tjelvar really couldn’t help but join in. He slumped down against the wall of the baggage car and laughed, leaning into Edward.

“A murder scene and a murderous jewelery box,” he said, when the hysterics had finally worn off. “I haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

“I’m sure we can get you something from the dining car,” sighed Edward.

“Honestly, I think I’ll wait until Khartoum. We’ll be there in a few hours and apparently everything on this bloody train is cursed.”

“The beds were all right.”

“The way our luck’s going, the sheets will try to strangle us when next we sit on them.”

They collapsed into another fit of giggles that had very little to do with humour and more to do with hysteria. Tjelvar sighed, enjoying the comfortingly solid form of Edward’s shoulder against his.

“There’s this great little cafe near the fishing docks in Khartoum.” Tjelvar closed his eyes a moment, leaning his head back against the wall and painting the scene in his memory. “Serves fresh grilled fish and these wonderful date cocktails. I could be sitting there this afternoon. Just eating and drinking and confident no one is actively trying to kill me.”

“Sounds great.”

“It does. Do you have any plans this evening, Ed? I’ll take you.” Tjelvar felt himself falter, felt his throat begin to betray him but kept his eyes shut and forged on. “I meant to buy you a drink in the dining car last night but, well. This train. Cursed.”

“Yeah. That sounds...lovely.”

Tjelvar opened his eyes and caught Edward glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t quite dare to turn his head and properly look at Edward’s expression, but he smiled a little into the middle distance nonetheless. It was a nice thought, some small bright future moment to reach towards. Some time to properly catch up with Edward, to sit beneath the awnings that sheltered Khartoum from the storms and just...be himself for a little while. Of course, first he had to get off this train alive.

“You know, this means our suspect is looking even less likely than before,” Tjelvar said. “Figgis was trying to rob Katherina, not make her luggage deadly in, let’s be honest, a really impractical way.” Tjelvar looked at the remaining sentient pieces of baggage and frowned. “That must have taken some planning.”

“Why’d you even want to bring mimics on a train? Seems like it would be really easy for them to escape.”

“It does.” Tjelvar sighed. “Well, no one is going to be checking the passenger paperwork or sending an emergency telegram. Which I like not one bit.”

“We’re going to have to tell Nadiya about Youssef,” said Edward, his voice serious again.

“Yes.” Tjelvar felt a lurch in his gut for the young conductor. “Edward, I think the safest thing might be getting everyone to hide in their rooms from now on. We obviously can’t keep everyone safe and the sooner we get to Khartoum, the better.”

No sooner had Tjelvar spoken than the train let out a long, shrill whistle and began to slow. The deceleration got sharper - the wheels screeched on the rails - and the train came to a jolting stop.

“Why? Why did I open my damn mouth?” Tjelvar screwed his eyes shut and knocked his head gently against the wall of the baggage car. He opened his eyes, saw Edward looking with concern towards the berth and the twins.

“Come on then.” Tjelvar pushed himself to his feet, offering a hand down to Edward. “Let’s find out what’s going on.” 

*

“Sunflower says something stopped the train. Something mechanical.”

Tjelvar stood in the staff compartment at the front of the stricken train, among the staff. It was a cosy little place - a rest area for the conductors when they were off-duty and somewhere for the engine crew to take a break from the smoke and the heat. Tjelvar had watched the stokers come in - there was a narrow, rickety catwalk connecting the footplate and the carriage, running around the outside of the train. Tjelvar would hesitate to use it now with the train stationary - apparently the engine crew hopped over it regularly to make tea and nick leftover cake.

The stoker twins, Aya and Dinah Salah, sat grim-faced either side of Yasmina, giving what comfort they could to the red-eyed and hiccuping woman. She’d taken Youssef’s death the hardest. In a corner Nadiya scowled down at a map, scribbling notes in pencil in the margins of it. Tjelvar himself stood facing the driver, Sara Abdul-Khan, who was holding the hand of a halfling girl made of living flame. Behind them hovered a young elf, feet in a bucket, skin rippling like the surface of a pond. Which, essentially, was what it was.

On one hand, Tjelvar knew trains and various other types of automotive technology made use of elementals. One the other, it was quite a different thing to have one stand in front of you and smile shyly when you asked her a question. He’d heard that some companies were only using willing elementals for ethical reasons - he supposed this was what it looked like in practice.

“Does she -” Tjelvar caught himself, smiled an apology and looked directly at the elemental. When he blinked, her afterimage danced on the inside of his eyelids. “Sunflower, was it a part of the train? A malfunction?”

Sunflower turned to Sara and Tjelvar heard the crackle of logs in the fire as her lips moved.

“Sunflower says no,” Sara translated. “She says it feels like someone did something to the train and just stopped everything.” Sara exchanged an angry look with Sunflower. “It’s sabotage, she’s sure of it.”

Behind them, the young elf spoke, bringing the sound of a bubbling stream to the train car.

“Waterlily says he can’t communicate with the hydraulics anymore - the brakes have locked and whatever it is, it’s keeping us from moving again.” Sara translated again, giving the water elemental a pat on the arm that turned her glove soggy.

“And we need to  _ get _ moving,” said Nadiya. “We should be an hour out of Khartoum, but what with everything that happened we’re still half a day out, look.” Their route was mapped in red ink across a narrow map showing the geography around the route. There was a cross about three quarters of the way down. “That’s where we are,” said Nadiya, pointing at it, before moving her finger further down the map to where the red line crossed a narrow blue ribbon. “We  _ should _ be crossing the Nile at Shendi by now.”

“Do the signallers know we’re running late?” asked Tjelvar, thinking of the mimic-mauled telegraph equipment and the possibility of others on the track, oblivious of the express still to pass.

“Yes, we’ve got rudimentary backups,” replied Nadiya. “But all we can really communicate is that we’re late or that there’s an emergency. There’s no signal for  _ everyone on the train is dropping dead and we need a battalion of police _ .”

“Seems like an oversight,” said Tjelvar, drily.

“Ha! We get to Khartoum alive and I’ll write the damn signal standard myself.”

“Sunflower,” said Tjelvar, turning back to the elemental. “Can you tell me where on the train the problem is?”

Sunflower crackled and popped out an answer, and when the translation came, something slotted into place in Tjelvar’s mind.

“What?” Nadiya squinted up at him. “You just got a look like a firework went off in your head.”

“The join between the first and second class carriages,” repeated Tjelvar, almost to himself. “That’s where we found Archie Sterling’s body.”

*

“So I take it this means you’ve cracked it, then?” Nathaniel’s voice came from above him, and Tjelvar extracted himself delicately from where he’d pried up the service hatch and stuck his top half through the machinery of the carriage. Nathaniel leaned against the wall, an amused smile on his face.

“What makes you say that?” he answered carefully, and Nathaniel laughed.

“There’s no one else around, Tjelvar. You can admit that I know you and that I know  _ that look _ .” Nathaniel smirked at him. “You’ve got to the bottom of this, somehow.”

“Almost,” replied Tjelvar, mouth twitching upwards.  “I’m just looking for something in particular to confirm it.” Tjelvar stuck his head down again, using various bits of dark machinery to prop himself up. He scanned the underside of the train, his inverted perspective odd and industrial, gazing along the rigid, vanishing straight lines of wheel and rail.

He caught sight of it quickly, something small and glowing and out of place. It shone silver against the blackened steel of the train, an odd, sickly shimmer over the surface that made Tjelvar decide against touching it. He opened his mouth to call up to Nathaniel, but before he could, he heard some further footsteps and another voice.

“What’s going on?” asked Bronwyn.

“Ms Jones - it’s dangerous and you should be back in your cabin.” Nathaniel’s voice was kind but firm, and Tjelvar wondered if the suspicion that had just arrived in his head had appeared in Nathaniel’s. Bronwyn Jones was being very brave for someone who’d seen two bodies in as many days. Come to think of it, she’d been the one to discover Archie’s body, and she’d been right next to Galina when she’d taken her final, fateful drink….

When Tjelvar surfaced, though, she merely looked at him in dismay.

“Oh, Mr Stornsnasson,” she said. “You’ve ruined your shirt.”

Tjelvar looked down, saw black, oily streaks running all the way up his left sleeve, and sighed. He drew in a breath, wondering what to tell Nathaniel’s expectant look, when there was a brief, high-pitched whine and a clink of something small falling from the train to the rails below. All three of them knelt above the open hatch and looked through - the small thing Tjelvar had seen on the underside of the carriage had fallen off.

“What did you do?” asked Nathaniel.

“I didn’t even touch it,” replied Tjelvar.

The thing flashed once with an eerie lilac light, and the train began to move again, slowly at first, but gathering speed quickly. By the time Tjelvar, Nathaniel and Bronwyn had extricated themselves and replaced the service hatch, they were a good way towards their top speed.

“What was the point in that? A device that stopped the train for an hour then, what, just let it keep going?” Nathaniel stumbled slightly as he stood, the train jolting even faster forward. “Trying to make up for lost time, you think?”

“I don’t know - this doesn’t feel right,” Tjelvar glanced worriedly down the train, opened his mouth to say he needed to go and check on Edward and the twins, and stopped. He  _ needed _ to go and see that everything was alright on the engine’s footplate. He  _ wanted _ to make sure Edward was alright.

“What’s even here to stop for?” asked Bronwyn. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“But we weren’t meant to be,” said Tjelvar, half to himself. “We were supposed to be crossing the Nile, but we stopped for hours that first night.”

“And now we’re going faster and faster,” said Nathaniel as the train picked up another burst of speed, with a smile that didn’t quite mask his worry. “Don’t suppose your paladin can spare some time from Al-Tahan-sitting to heal the train?”

Tjelvar glanced at him, saw his concerned look peering out the window, and took a breath in to ask - he wasn’t sure, and never got to frame the question because on the in-breath he smelled smoke. In the next moment he’d turned, and seen the unmistakable orange glow flickering down the corridor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gorgeous elementals and their worried train-crew wives drawn beautifully by Jaliuboots - she can be found on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/the.one.the.only.mimi.q/), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/QTheonetheonly), and [tumblr](https://theonetheonlymimiq.tumblr.com/).


	8. The Burning Question

The windows of the stateroom shattered outwards, sending glass shards and gouts of flame flying through the corridor. Tjelvar ducked instinctively, feeling the intense heat wash over his head. He glanced up - on the other side of the carriage, Edward’s face shimmered in the heat haze.

“It’s a fire elemental!” Edward yelled over the roar of the inferno.

“Did they get out?” Tjelvar called back. From inside the burning cabin, a hoarse scream answered his question for him.

“The door’s locked!” Edward looked anguished. “I tried to get in but someone locked the door!”

“Damn!” Tjelvar looked over his shoulder to where Nathaniel and Bronwyn crouched behind him. “Right - some impromptu search-and-rescue then. Come on.”

“Someone should make sure Mrs Weber is okay!” piped up Bronwyn, her eyes wide with shock.

“Good idea, Ms Jones - can you do that? Wonderful,” he smiled as she nodded. “Nate, you’re with me. Edward,” Tjelvar reached him, leaning close to make himself heard. “Do you think you can hold it off until Nate and I get Katharina and Hugo out of there?”

“Yeah, I reckon so,” replied Edward, face grim.

“Just hold it off, Eddie.” Tjelvar’s voice was firm even as his stomach lurched. “No heroic sacrifices, okay? I want everyone out alive and in one piece and that absolutely includes you.” Edward only nodded, an odd sort of light in his eyes. Tjelvar mustered the best smile he could and squeezed his shoulder. “All right then - if you could do the honours, Edward?”

The heat as Edward kicked the door open was searing, the thickness of the smoky air enough to force Tjelvar to his hands and knees, almost stunned. Then Edward launched himself forward, a shining comet, roaring “have at you, evil beast!” and Tjelvar pushed himself onward into the cabin.

Katharina was easy to spot, propped up on the floor, looking up in horror and terror at the fire elemental that had been menacing her until an enchanted morningstar suddenly collided with the side of its head. Tjelvar grabbed her shoulders.

“Katharina, can you walk?” Her eyes flicked to him, her mouth frozen open in the rictus of a scream as she grasped at his collar.

“Hugo!” she wailed, twisting in Tjelvar’s grip as he tried to pick her up and carry her out. “Hugo!”

“We’ll find him!” Tjelvar tried to grasp her more firmly only to have her writhe harder, turning back to the blackened heap of something that she had swooned across. Except, as she shook it, Tjelvar realised that what he’d taken to be scorched rubble was the soot-blackened form of Hugo Steiner, and Katharina’s last, desperate act had been to throw herself between him and the looming, burning elemental.

“All right!” Tjelvar called back. “Nate, if I take…” Tjelvar trailed off as he looked around him and realised Nathaniel was nowhere to be found. “ _ Damn it! _ All right - Katharina, can you crawl? The door is open - I’ll take Hugo, you get yourself out.”

Tjelvar grabbed the man beneath the armpits and hauled. It was difficult - he was well-built and utterly limp. Katharina didn’t help, half-crouching and half-crawling beside him, utterly refusing to break step and gripping at any bit of Hugo she could reach.

A cry to one side - Tjelvar looked up to see a bedpost, flaming and jagged, falling. He ducked in time to cover Katharina and Hugo, feeling the wood hit painfully around his ribs.

“Tjelvar!” Edward screamed behind him. 

“I’m all right!” he called back, shoving the burning pole to one side, feeling its flames burn the skin of his palm. More flames licked at the inside of his elbow - his waistcoat had caught fire. Tjelvar tore it off, hurled it with a moment of glee into a nearby conflagration, before turning back to Hugo and Katharina. One more almighty effort and Tjelvar was through the door and pulling Hugo clear. He stumbled further back into the corridor, gasping in the cooler, clearer air.

“Hugo, Hugo,  _ liebchen _ ,” Katharina pulled him from Tjelvar’s grip, cradling him in her lap, stroking at his unresponsive face. “Please, you have to help him!” Tjelvar looked at the tear tracks running through the soot on her face, and couldn’t reply before he turned on his heel.

“Eddie!” he yelled into the burning cabin. “They’re clear, get out!”

It was the wrong thing to do - Edward turned at the sound of his voice, missed a swipe from the monster and was sent stumbling, his cloak blackening under where it hit him. Tjelvar let out a wordless cry and started forward, unarmed, useless, driven by the tightness in his chest even as Edward recovered by landing an enormous upswing from the morningstar on the monster, sending it crashing back into the writing desk. The thought of what exactly he planned to do unarmed against a fire elemental had just occurred to him when something hooked both his ankles out from under him and sent him to the floor.

Tjelvar looked up - met Edward’s eyes, looking back at him with a horror that mirrored the one he felt - and then ducked as twin jets of water hit the fire elemental and the cabin filled with steam. A familiar hand gripped his - Tjelvar clung on, and half-yanked, half-guided Edward back out through the doorway.

Waterlily and Sara vaulted into the burning room, Waterlily now something sinuous and terrifying, a waterspout frothing white in fury, Sara surrounded by a glowing nimbus, her shovel gleaming with holy energy as they blasted the fire elemental with water again and again, until there was nothing left but steam and charred wood.

Not that Tjelvar watched that. The moment he caught his breath he had turned to Edward, checking for burns, finding himself examined in turn.

“Are you alright -”

“That hit looked awful, did you -”

“Let me help -”

A small wail from the direction of Katherina snapped them both out of it. Edward started up, kneeling beside the downed Hugo. There was a muttering from which Tjelvar picked up the familiar rhythms of a prayer to Apollo, and then Hugo was hacking hard enough to cough his lungs up.

“He’ll be all right,” said Edward, once Hugo had caught his breath. Tjelvar thought about suggesting that Katharina might help Hugo recover by releasing him from her rib-cracking hug, but decided against it in favour of watching Edward walk back over to him.

“You okay, Tjelvar?” asked Edward, softly, extending a hand down to him.

“Could do with that drink right now,” replied Tjelvar, taking Edward’s hand and allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. “But fine, otherwise.”

“Something I wish I could say for this poor carriage,” said Sara, walking out of the still-steaming wreck of the room behind her. “It’ll hold together for the journey, but I think it’s the scrapyard for her at journey’s end.”

“Wait - did anyone see where Mr Skye went?” Tjelvar remembered with a jolt of guilt and fear. “He was right behind me when we went into the cabin, and then -”

Waterlily, back in waiflike humanoid form, pulled a face and said something that sounded like raindrops in a puddle and gestured up the train with a thumb.

“He says your long streak of piss went running that way the moment you two ducked inside the cabin.”

“Isn’t the saying usually “tall drink of water?” asked Tjelvar, grinning.

Waterlily muttered something bubbling that Tjelvar didn’t need a translation to know was “don’t insult water like that.”

“Well, at least he’s safe,” sighed Tjelvar, altogether too tired to bother with being angry.

“Ah! And looks like the girls have got that other one under control!” said Sara as the train began to slow, barely perceptibly, from its breakneck speed.

“Other one?” said Edward.

“Yeah, looks like when we were all nattering in the control cabin, someone let a fire elemental into the engine. Riled it up good, too, that’s why we’ve been going so fast.” Sara gave a humourless grin. “I almost pity the poor thing - Sunflower’s angry when someone threatens her train but she’s a sweetheart compared to Aya and Dina with their blood up.”

Waterlily tugged at her sleeve, clearly anxious to get back to his locomotive and help the stokers finish beating the elemental out with their shovels. Tjelvar took in a breath to suggest perhaps everyone gather somewhere, when the last remaining intact door in the first class carriage shattered outwards.

“The twins,” Edward had just enough time to gasp before Nathaniel Skye came hurtling backwards out of the berth, splintering the door into matchsticks and slamming hard into the windows opposite. A glittering magical bolt followed him through the door and struck him on the chest - in the doorway, Ismail Al-Tahan stood, trembling, tear-stained, scales sprouting across his face as his teeth lengthened.

“ _ Don’t you dare touch him, _ ” he said, voice low and hoarse and filled with far more hostile intent than a berserker scream could ever be.  _ “Don’t you dare try to take him _ .”

Nathaniel looked at the teenage spectre of death in front of him, then to Edward, hurrying towards him up the corridor, and spat a curse. He threw one elbow into the already-cracked window behind him, climbed past the broken glass and up onto the roof of the train.

“Ismail,” said Ishak, reaching out to his brother.

“No,” said Ismail, rod straight and trembling. “No they’re not going to take you again, Ishak, it’ll be okay.” Ishak’s hand grasped his brother’s shirtsleeve and Ismail shook his head. “I’m going to protect you, you’re going to stay here, with me and it’ll be okay.”

“Yeah,” said Ishak, his voice the one you might use to soothe a stray horse. “It’ll be fine, Ismail, I’m fine, I’m not going anywhere.”

Ismail looked sharply around at him, scowl in full force, saw the nervous little smile on his twin’s face, and burst into tears. Ishak pulled him close, letting his brother sob into his collarbone and giving a few wobbly sniffs of his own. Edward was at their side a moment later, guiding them gently back into the cabin. Tjelvar hesitated a moment, wondering where in this familial scene he fitted, and in that pause he heard it - the slight slip of foot on steel, the way someone might lose their footing slightly when the train they were balanced on the top of slowed slightly. 

“Reckon we’ve finally found our murderer, Tjelvar?” asked Sara, standing beside him, her eyes also following the movement of footsteps on the carriage roof.

“I think we have,” Tjelvar replied grimly.  _ And I should have found him much sooner. All that talk to Edward about not trusting anyone, and I go and break that rule straightaway. _

“I think it’s time we end this,” Tjelvar said, before looking down at Sara. “If I can push him towards the locomotive, can you and the rest of the crew corner him there?"

Waterlily said something that sounded like the sucking of a riptide.

“It’ll be our pleasure,” translated Sara.

Tjelvar gave her a brisk nod and loosened his sword in its sheath. He didn’t follow Nathaniel out of the window - no doubt as he lifted himself clear of the roof he’d find a boot coming the other way - instead he ran back to the join between the carriages, slid an emergency exit window down as silently as possible, and pulled himself onto the ladder on the side of the train.

He paused there a moment, holding tight, listening hard. The sand howled past him - the storm had abated slightly as they’d moved south, but it still made visibility beyond a few metres impossible and the train was incrementally slowing but Tjelvar suspected they were still going at almost sixty miles an hour. The thunder of the breeze continued unabated, and Tjelvar pulled himself rung by rung to the top of the train, silently and carefully.

The wind buffeted harder on the carriagetop and Tjelvar kept low, using the train’s slipstream to stay beneath the bulk of the rising smoke and the swirling sand. He didn’t know what exactly Nathaniel’s goals were but Tjelvar knew he’d expect to be followed, so he’d be ready for a fight. And the thing about fighting on the roof of a train carriage is that it’s less about taking your opponent  _ down _ and more about taking your opponent  _ off… _

Tjelvar heard the step behind him and was ready for the sword swing when it came, two-handed and flat-bladed, meant less to cut and more to knock him flat, the easier to be shoved off the side. He caught it on the forearm and pushed back up into it, sending Nathaniel’s arm swinging wide and away, the man himself caught by the air current and stumbling. Tjelvar pulled his own sword free and swiped at Nathaniel’s ankles, hoping to knock him off balance. A desperate few steps and Nathaniel was steady again, knees bent and half-crouched, facing him.

“It would be a pity to kill you, Tjelvar,” said Nathaniel. “I always liked you.”

“Really?” replied Tjelvar. “I always thought you were a smarmy bastard.”

Nathaniel’s grin turned into a swipe - Tjelvar parried - the train rattled on. 

“Not really our style, this,” called Nathaniel as they paused, panting, the echoes of the swordfight drowned in the thunder of the train. They were evenly matched - Nathaniel the more skilled swordsman, Tjelvar swifter and surer on his feet. “No cloaks, no daggers.”

“Would you like me to turn my back so you can stab me in it again?” asked Tjelvar, brightly. Nathaniel gave something between a grin and a snarl and lunged – Tjelvar had been ready and counterattacked, ducking beneath Nathaniel’s vicious swing and scoring a long, shallow cut across his ribs.

“So cross, Tjelvar.” Nathaniel tutted, pressing one hand to the wound, other keeping his sword levelled at Tjelvar’s chest. “It was nothing personal, you know.”

Tjelvar said nothing, pressing his lips into a firm line. Whether or not that was true, Nathaniel had made a fool of him. It shouldn’t have mattered quite so much, not next to the carnage Nathaniel had wrought on the train, but something stung in the pit of his stomach.

The wind blew a snatch of commotion towards them – Nathaniel’s eyes slid towards the locomotive and Tjelvar moved quickly, aiming for Nathaniel’s sword arm. One – two – three blows parried wildly and Nathaniel’s boot-heels clicked on the sloping edge of the carriage roof.

“Come with me,” Nathaniel breathed, his smirk entirely dissolved and a frenzied light in his eye.

“What?” Tjelvar blinked at him.

“We can fix things, Tjelvar.” Nathaniel’s voice was urgent. “Forget the train and the Harlequins, all their bloody  _ protocol _ . We’ve got a chance to  _ do something _ .”

“Oh yes?” said Tjelvar, willing his voice to remain steady even as his curiosity suddenly flared. “And how many train passengers will we have to kill to achieve this grand plan?”

“Ugh, please.” Nathaniel rolled his eyes. “You’ve been spending far too long around that bloody  _ paladin _ -”

Tjelvar jabbed his sword forward, his intrigue flashing over into fury. He timed it wrong – as he darted forward the train slowed and his momentum pitched him over, arms flailing as he overbalanced. The pommel of Nathaniel’s sword came down hard in the small of his back and Tjelvar fell, twisting desperately to avoid the train’s edge and landing hard on his back. He watched his sword spin, vanish into the swirling storm. Tjelvar felt himself slide, his centre of gravity too far over the edge, until Nathaniel’s boot came down hard on his elbow, pinning him in place. 

“Well that was fun and all.” The tip of Nathaniel’s sword came to rest in the hollow of Tjelvar’s throat. “But it’s time to stop this nonsense. Give me the Ankh of Isis.”

“The what?” Tjelvar screwed up his face in confusion.

“Don’t give me that, Tjelvar,” Nathaniel sighed like a disappointed governess. “I know you have it. I know  _ you _ , so I know you’ve got it on you. Give it to me, and I’ll let you go back to your blue-eyed boy in peace.” Tjelvar said nothing, his right hand scrabbling on the smooth side of the carriage for a handhold. Nathaniel pressed a little harder against his throat. “I did mean it when I said it would be a pity to kill you, but I will. Give me the Ankh, Tjelvar, or I’ll gut you and loot your body for it.”

“Best get started, then,” Tjelvar replied. “We’re not far out of Khartoum. Do you have enough time to find it? Are you sure I didn’t hide it on the train?” Nathaniel bared his teeth, but whatever he may have been about to say was interrupted by a call of  _ “Tjelvar!” _ from the direction of the locomotive.

_ Edward _ .

“Let’s see what your paladin has to say, shall we?” Nathaniel stamped hard down on Tjelvar’s ribs, squeezing the air out of him, before dragging him up and throwing him forward over the yawning gap between the dining car and the coal tenders. Tjelvar had just enough time to pitch towards the blurred tracks, to remember the uniform ranks of iron wheels, when a hand knotted in his hair and stopped him falling. He gasped in pain and shock and felt the point of a sword press into the small of his back.

“Tjelvar!” Edward appeared out of the sand, standing atop the coal in the tender, morningstar in hand and breaking into a jog when he met Tjelvar’s eye.

“No closer, please, Mr Keystone,” called Nathaniel affably from behind him. “Or I’m afraid I’ll be forced to drop our mutual friend beneath the wheels.” Edward froze and the small parts of Tjelvar not hyperfocused on what falling beneath a train might be like had to admit Nathaniel had improvised well. The majority of Tjelvar’s weight was over the edge of the carriage - if Nathaniel were to let go of his hair, he’d drop. The distance between the carriage and the tenders was only about ten feet, but Tjelvar had no way to gain enough purchase or momentum to make the leap and there was nothing to catch onto as you fell - the couplings of the locomotive to the carriages were too close to the rails, and the catwalk that the crew used was too far to one side.

“Let him go,” growled Edward.

“I thought that’s what we were trying to avoid.” Nathaniel laughed a little at his own joke. “Now, Tjelvar won’t tell me where his precious cargo is - he’s made it clear he’d rather die - but I have a feeling that’s not quite how you see things. Even better, you’re a paladin and you can’t lie to me.” 

Tjelvar kept his eyes on Edward’s face, indistinct and anguished through the sand and smoke. “Eddie, don’t-” he began, then gasped as Nathaniel let him fall forward an inch.

“We’re talking about you, not to you, Tjelvar, be a good chap and shut up.” Nathaniel’s tone steeled. “Tell me where it is, Mr Keystone.”

Edward looked torn, eyes flicking between their faces.

“My arm is getting tired,” Nathaniel’s voice bounced a little, a manic singsong edge creeping in. “It would be a terrible waste to smear him across the tracks, don’t you think? He’s far too pretty for that.”

“Fuck you,” snarled Tjelvar.

“Oh, you had your chance, Tjelvar.” Nathaniel’s grip tightened in Tjelvar’s hair. “I won’t ask again, Mr Keystone.”

“Wait!” Edward held a hand out. “Wait! It’s in his hip flask - there’s a concealed bit at the bottom.”

“There we are! Wasn’t so hard, was it?” The sword poked a little harder into Tjelvar’s back. “Hand it over, Tjelvar.”

“I’m sorry, Tjelvar.” Edward looked desolate as Tjelvar reached slowly into his trouser pocket and pulled out the battered silver hip flask. Tjelvar looked at him, keeping his eyes locked on Edward’s, willing Edward to do the same.

“Edward,” he breathed, so low not even he could hear it. “Catch!”

He threw the flask high, straight up into the swirling sand overhead. Nathaniel let out a guttural cry and Tjelvar was suddenly falling forward. With his last bit of leverage, he pushed off the roof of the carriage. It wasn’t enough - he had barely enough purchase to get his outstretched fingers to brush the steel of the tender car - gravity snatched at him - and something else snatched him right back.

A flurry of movement and a rattle of clinkers, and Tjelvar was atop the coal pile in the tender car, Edward’s arms wrapped around his waist, his own holding tight around Edward’s shoulders, their faces close enough that the edges of Edward’s terrified expression were indistinct.

“Good catch,” murmured Tjelvar, an adrenaline fueled grin on his face.

“Please don’t ever do that again!” Edward’s voice caught on the words. There was coal dust flecked across Edward’s face; Tjelvar fleetingly wondered what the most efficient way of removing the smudge on his bottom lip would be before he was interrupted by a roar of fury and anguish.

Running footsteps - a shadow in the mist that resolved into the shape of Nathaniel Skye, face contorted in rage - “down!” bellowed Edward, pushing Tjelvar beneath him, gauntleted arm raised to fend off a blow - the crunch of Nathaniel’s boots landing in the coal - and, rising above the edges of the coal tender like soot-covered avenging angels, two furious figures with shovels.

Nathaniel went down to twin shovel blows to the backs of his legs and Tjelvar almost felt sorry for him.

“That’s what you get for messing with our train,” spat Aya Salah.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by BOTH these spectacular artists! I'm spoiled! :D :D :D
> 
> Afarai - [See more of her work here](https://afarai.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Jaliuboots - check out their work on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/the.one.the.only.mimi.q/), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/QTheonetheonly), and [tumblr](https://theonetheonlymimiq.tumblr.com/).


	9. All Change, Please

“I’d ask if you were here to brag,” said Nathaniel as Tjelvar walked into the berth that had been Archie’s, now serving as a cell. “But I don’t really see what you have to brag about.”

Tjelvar leaned against the wall opposite where Nathaniel was handcuffed to his bunk and returned his poisonous glower with a pensive gaze. Edward walked in, countenance grim and unforgiving. The door clicked shut and Tjelvar let the silence stretch a little further.

“What I can’t quite see is your endgame, Nate,” he said, at last. “Archie and me? Well, so far so obvious. Galina - an accomplice? Although you didn’t do your vetting properly if you didn’t know she was Lada Kuznetsov. But the sabotage? The attack on the Al-Tahan children? What was any of that about?”

“Oh, sweet Tjelvar, it was always about you.” Nathaniel grinned up at him. “I wanted the ankh, and Lada was desperate enough to help me. It was just my pissing luck they sent Archie with you instead of Manon. Never thought he was telling the truth about the  _ Amphitrite _ but here we are. The Al-Tahan boys…” Nathaniel shrugged. “I knew threatening you to get the ankh wouldn’t work, and taking the Golden Twit here hostage would be difficult. If they weren’t good enough leverage for you, they would be for someone else.”

Tjelvar forced the next breath slow and steady through his teeth, held it and exhaled all the way before he allowed himself to answer.

“I take it the fire and all the other bits of sabotage were part of an escape plan?” 

“It would have been convenient, wouldn’t it? A stop near the river to sneak off, then an uncontrollable fire to cover up the fact I wasn’t on the train later. Clever. Pity I didn’t think of that,” shrugged Nathaniel.

“What?” frowned Tjelvar.

“I’ll admit to trying to kill you in your cabin as well as trying to throw you off the roof,” said Nathaniel. “Lada threatened to tell you everything to save her own skin when it looked like she’d get stitched up for Archie and I couldn’t let that happen. But Archie? The Fire? You’ve got the wrong man.”

“You’re telling me Archie had the power to blow your cover and you  _ didn’t _ kill him?” Tjelvar blinked, unimpressed.

“Oh, I thought about it. Might even have enjoyed it - he was such an enormous prick.” Nate smirked at the immediate scowl on Tjelvar’s face. “But someone beat me to it, old chap.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Edward flatly.

“Think what you want.” Nathaniel looked him up and down, sneered, before turning back to Tjelvar. “But you haven’t won, Tjelvar. You didn’t solve the murder of Archibald Sterling.” He laughed, harsh and bitter. “And you threw away the Ankh of Isis! It might really have changed things, Tjelvar! Of all the gimcrack rubbish they’ve had us chase, this one might actually have worked, and you  _ lost it! _ ”

“And I suppose whoever you were planning to sell it to would have completely selflessly used it to heal the world, would they?” Tjelvar rolled his eyes.

“I wasn’t planning to  _ sell _ it!” Nathaniel jerked forward, his cuffs rattling against the bedframe, his eyes iron-hard. “I was going to use it! You know what would have happened if you’d delivered it to the blasted Harlequins - it would have vanished into their testing labs and by the time they’d deemed it safe and useful we’d have lost far more than any advantage it could possibly have given us! Tell me I’m wrong. Say it!”

Tjelvar said nothing - for all the venom in Nathaniel’s tone, it was something Tjelvar had seen play out again and again. He settled for sighing and loosening his cravat.

Nathaniel laughed again, savage and poisonous. “You know, I thought you were different when we met, Tjelvar. I thought maybe here was someone who’d understand that the end, the whole  _ saving the world  _ thing, justified any means necessary. But no, you’re so bound by rules that you’d throw something away rather than  _ break protocol _ and let the Ankh fall into the...hands...of…”

Nathaniel trailed off as he spotted the thing dangling from Tjelvar’s fingers. It was an ankh, secured with a length of rough string, about the size of Tjelvar’s outstretched hand. It was carved out of lapis lazuli, with intricate relief detail, accented in gold. As it swayed gently back and forth, the light from the window danced across its surface, winking like sunlight on the Nile.

“ _ How, _ ” began Nathaniel.

“I hid it in the lining of my cravat,” Tjelvar replied. “Can tie an excellent half-windsor around it.” Tjelvar looked admonishingly at Nathaniel’s dumbstruck expression. “Come on. You didn’t think I’d just leave it in the hip flask after you’d tried to kill me for it? Protocol, Nate.” 

Nathaniel stared a moment longer before bursting into laughter, genuine this time. “Alright, I take it all back. You do win. Bravo, Tjelvar.”

“Forgive me if I don’t bow,” said Tjelvar drily. He felt the smile fade as he looked into the soot-stained, half-wild grin on the man he’d thought a friend. “Nate…” Tjelvar paused and shook his head. “Never mind.” He turned, meeting Edward’s eye and nodding at the door.

“Be seeing you,” called Nathaniel after him, just as he crossed the threshold of the berth. Tjelvar paused, looked back into a smirk altogether too knowing.

“I don’t think you will.” He replied, one hand on the doorframe.

“Maybe not in person - they’ll have killed me before dawn tomorrow I expect.” Nathaniel shrugged. “But I’m right and you know it. We’re the same, you and me - you just haven’t realised it yet.”

Tjelvar held his gleaming look a moment longer, before he turned and stepped out into the corridor.

“I suppose he was right,” said Tjelvar to Edward as the door slid shut with a loud, final click behind them. “I did go to gloat.”

“I would have,” said Edward, grinning at him. “That trick with the ankh was well clever.”

“Ha. Thanks,” Tjelvar looked at it in his palm and then tied the ends of the string together and looped it around his neck, slipping it beneath his shirt. “Sorry for not telling you, by the way.”

“The no-lying thing, right? It’s no problem.” And from the bright smile on Edward’s face, it genuinely seemed not to be. “For the greater good and all that, right?”

“Something else he was right about,” sighed Tjelvar, the crushing exhaustion of the past few days catching up with him all at once.

“What?” Edward’s brightness faltered, a crease forming between his eyebrows.

“We are the same, or we’re close enough that it makes no difference.” Tjelvar leaned against the carriage window, stared unseeingly out of it. “You weren’t here, Edward. You didn’t see what this did to us, all of us.”

“Tjelvar,” said Edward, stepping slightly closer.

“I don’t mean - you’ve had your own trials and gods know they sound awful,” Tjelvar glanced at him, smiled ruefully at his worried expression. “But we had to watch as the world fell apart around us and no one did anything to stop it. Did you know the Meritocrats are only now having a summit to discuss whether they should do something? Now! After it’s taken all of Europe and one of their own!” Tjelvar ran his hand through his hair and didn’t even have the energy to feel a spike of irritation that it was still loose. “The Harlequins and the churches are better - at least they’re trying to help. But nothing works. Everything takes too long. I will deliver the ankh to the researchers in Khartoum and honestly I think it’s fifty-fifty on whether I’ll live to see anything they do with it.”

“You can’t lose hope, Tjelvar.” Edward stood close now, tone so understanding that it ached to be pinned by that expression gone impossibly soft.

“I lost it months ago, Eddie. It hurts too much to hold onto.” Tjelvar looked down at the carpet, saving himself just before he hung his head. “Nate is right - the only difference between me and him is that I came out on top this time.”

“And that you didn’t kill anyone.” Edward caught Tjelvar’s hand where it traced the outline of the ankh through his shirt. “You didn’t set fire to a train or kidnap a kid or poison a woman.”

Tjelvar thought back over his short and colourful career as a Harlequin agent and wanted to pull his hand from Edward’s before he bloodstained it. Edward's hand tightened around his and he dipped his eyes slightly, catching Tjelvar’s gaze.

“I don’t know what you’ve done since we met last,” said Edward. “But all you’ve done on this train is try to protect everyone else on it. You didn’t hurt anyone, just because you thought you knew better. From where I’m standing, you’re nothing like him at all.”

Tjelvar looked at him, saw the gentle smile widening gradually on his face, and for a moment every word he might have said to prove Edward wrong left his head. Tjelvar looked into the blue of his eyes, bright and blessed as a clear summer sky, and for a moment he fancied he could fall into them.

The  _ Hatshepsut’s  _ whistle sounded and something waving and patterned sped past the window.

“Oh,” said Edward, looking away as more awnings came into view, eventually covering the train tracks and keeping the sand off enough for some actual scenery to appear. “I think we’re here.”

Arrival and disembarkation was the flurry of activity that always follows the end of a long journey - double- and triple-checking that you had everything, being sure you have, remembering some other point of business and fussing after that. The end result is a period that manages to combine uncomfortable moments of nothing to do with not quite enough time to do it in. Tjelvar had enough time to slip a dagger onto his belt in the place of his lost sword, to replace his mimic-and-fire mauled shirt for something clean, and dig out his papers just in time for the train to hiss to a stop. Nadiya must have improvised with the signals, because there was her wished-for battalion of police constables to greet the train.

Tjelvar was waved through after providing his name and lodging; he saw Katharina and Hugo led off the train by a member of station staff - another had Effi Weber by the elbow. Tjelvar caught snatches of the conversation, in which the phrases “hotel booking” and “luggage car unavailable” popped up. Tjelvar looked over his shoulder and saw an anti-monster squad gearing up on the platform and quietly hoped there was nothing of sentimental value in Effi’s or Katharina’s boxes.

Further on again, the two malefactors were being led from the train - Nathaniel, still with a rakish grin on his face, and Figgis, who seemed to be trying to explain himself to anyone who would listen. Tjelvar turned away. Figgis was likely to get a firm telling off and a few weeks in a cell somewhere - there were bigger things to worry about in the current world than a petty thief. Like, for instance, someone who tried to steal something meant to help the war effort. As Nathaniel himself had said, Harlequin agents would catch up with him before long. And when they did, that would be the end of him. They didn’t tolerate traitors and profiteers. The stakes were too high.

Tjelvar shook himself and resumed his search for the exit he needed. He lighted instead on a man in Al-Tahan livery waiting on the concourse, and was reminded there was something he needed to do.

“Eddie,” Tjelvar caught up with him as he helped the Al-Tahan staffer load what few bits of luggage they’d been allowed to take from the train into a carriage. The sound of bickering came from inside, and Tjelvar gave a small chuckle - it seemed that normal service had been resumed between the twins.

“Tjelvar!” Edward’s face lit up. “I tried to spot you before we got off the train, but then there were the guards and I had to get the boys to the carriage.”

“That’s okay, Ed - listen, do you still fancy having dinner? With-with me, I mean. Tonight.” Tjelvar cursed himself and whatever stopped him uttering a complete sentence. “You remember, we talked about that cafe I know?”

“Yeah - yeah that sounds great,” Edward was nodding before Tjelvar was halfway through the first stutter. “Uh - you couldn’t come and pick me up, could you? I’ve never been here before and I get lost easily.”

“Not a problem - see you at seven?” The grin on Tjelvar’s face was wider than perhaps warranted, but Edward was answering in kind, so that didn’t matter.

“Yeah!”

Possibly neither the suavest dinner invitation nor the most operationally secure move, thought Tjelvar as he left the station and ducked out into Khartoum’s streets. For someone who was trying not to be spotted or followed out of the station, stopping to stammeringly invite the most beautiful man in it for a drink wasn’t the most inconspicuous course of action. Tjelvar went through the rote of anti-surveillance work anyway, taking circuitous routes, stopping for long periods and ensuring everyone around had moved off before he did. It wasn’t a spectacular hardship - he liked Khartoum, perched on the join of the Blue Nile and the White Nile. Inland as it was, the sandstorms had hit it later and less hard than the Nile Delta, and the residents had time to set up vast awnings over the main streets. The end result was almost cozy, a red-and-orange coated bubble within which life ticked on much as it always had. Even the bridges across the river, where the wind howled hardest, were swaddled in protective cloth and lit with hundreds of tiny alchemical lights.

Khartoum was its own place - a former trading post and market town that marked the border between the halfling influence in the north and the orcish influence to the south. It was the waypoint between the two and therefore belonged to both and neither. The city was a delightful patchwork of sizes and colours and smells. At its core, Khartoum was still the market town, peppered with a hundred souks beneath bright awnings. But things flowed here and lines blurred - jewellers crafted orcish designs in Egyptian gold, tea merchants blended Kenyan leaves with desert spices, gulf cotton was dyed damascan purple. It was ephemeral and swift, catching the senses like the colours of an opal in sunlight and gone again as quickly. It was invigorating and Tjelvar breathed it in.

So it was that he arrived at his destination almost cheerful, and left it a short while later certainly so. The process of identification and verification was quick - the reporting of Archie’s death and Nathaniel’s betrayal took a little longer but he was helped by word having preceded him. He might on another occasion have stayed to talk with his colleagues, to catch up on news, perhaps even dust off his rusting archaeological skills and help with the investigation of the Ankh. But there would be time for all that tomorrow, and Tjelvar instead stepped back out onto the street with the air of a man from whom the weight of the world had abruptly lifted.

Tjelvar headed to an apartment, an informal safehouse of sorts, that he and some of his colleagues used when visiting the city. It was empty, and he set about making himself at home, unpacking the few things he’d brought and then using the small, brightly tiled bathroom to scrub off the worst of the soot, blood and exhaustion until finally he began to look like himself again. Tjelvar was fully dressed and tying his hair into its customary knot (joy of joys!) before the thought struck him that perhaps that wasn’t the best idea. He’d been playing the raggedy dandy for the past few days and hated it, but he suddenly realised how plain he looked without any of his frippery. An open-collared shirt, sturdy dark trousers and pulled back hair - he’d never fretted about dressing this way before, but then it had also been quite some time since he’d invited someone out for dinner. Tjelvar rooted through his valise for his few remaining waistcoats, wondering if there were any that would suit. He recalled a soft grey jersey one that would be perfect - remembered a minute later that it was still hanging in a wardrobe in Cairo. He tried on the most muted one he had with him - a black and silver confection that just wasn’t  _ him _ .

At twenty to seven Tjelvar gave it up as a bad job and just left the house as he was, a decision he regretted watching Edward emerge from the Al-Tahan estate - via the servants entrance, something Tjelvar planned to be angry about when Edward wasn’t smiling at him like that. Edward looked wonderful, naturally, dressed in a charcoal grey suit that might have been a spare footman’s uniform without the Al-Tahan sigil. It was far more muted than his usual golden shimmer and it suited him perfectly.

“Hullo,” Edward said, reaching him and beaming. “You look great.”

“Thank you, Ed,” Tjelvar felt himself grin back. “So do you. Shall we?”

Khartoum began to twinkle as they walked through it, the fading light from beyond the canopies replaced by the winking on of the alchemical lamps. They went slowly - a few times Tjelvar had to retrace his steps to retrieve Edward, who’d been distracted by a friendly stray cat or a shimmering confluence of lights - but they reached the cosy cafe in the end and found a small table free in the dark wood interior. Tjelvar had worried about conversation - the time since they had been apart wasn’t a gentle topic of conversation and the time they’d spent together on the train had certainly had its bright moments, but also three bodies. But Edward started out asking him about Khartoum and the other beautiful things there might be to see here, including where was the most likely place to pet the street cats. Tjelvar told him as much as he could, expanding out into the other places, new and wonderful, that he’d visited since last they’d met.

Tjelvar told him of the ruins in the desert, of the glittering caverns filled with the glory of dead gods. Edward hesitantly described the little scraps of beauty that had survived in the wreckage of Rome, the prancing horses and frolicking dolphins still in mosaics on the floor, seemingly oblivious to the lack of feet passing across them. Tjelvar watched as Edward’s eyes glimmered with the wonders he related; marked the shade of pink his cheeks went as Tjelvar asked fascinated questions about the ruins of Rome. These were edited stories, skating over the desperation of survival in Rome and the ancient evil in the graves of the kings, but somehow in Edward’s company, it was easier to see the veins of beauty in them.

“These are really nice,” said Edward, draining the end of his second cocktail, plates scraped clean of fresh grilled fish. “What’s in them, by the way?” Tjelvar could feel the pleasant buzz of the alcohol settling in his mind, although Edward seemed unaffected. Then again, Edward’s limbs were looser, his smile easier than Tjelvar remembered seeing on the train. There was also the fact that their knees had been pressed into each other under the table for the last half an hour or so.

“I’ve never thought to ask,” replied Tjelvar, looking pensively at his glass. “There’s date syrup, I can taste that. Could be some sort of brandy?”

“They’re good - should we have another?” Edward’s question was straightforward, but Tjelvar felt the moment lace with something. He wasn’t drunk, not yet. But one more and he might be. And if he  _ did _ get drunk, then he might do something stupid.

In an unrelated thought, Edward had rolled the sleeves of his jacket up to his elbows and the golden hair of his forearms caught in the lantern light.

“Yes,” said Tjelvar. “I’m not ready for the night to end just yet.”

And there was a fleeting gleam in Edward’s eye as he turned to find a waiter that set a spark in Tjelvar’s sternum. He took the opportunity of Edward’s averted gaze to trace the chiselled line of his jaw, the pale skin of his neck and the hollow of his throat, partially obscured by his shirt collar. There was a small orange mark on it - a flick of spice from dinner or a brush of pollen from their walk here - and something slight and indistinct chimed in the back of Tjelvar’s mind. He frowned inwardly, trying to tease out the detail.

“Tjelvar?” Edward came back into focus, his head cocked to one side.

“Sorry,” Tjelvar snapped back to the present. “I’m - I don’t know, I was just reminded of something, I’m trying to place what.”

“What were you reminded of?”

“Shirts - stained shirts in particular.” Tjelvar worried his lip. “There’s  _ something _ significant about it, but I can’t quite grasp it.”

“Was it the shirt you were wearing earlier?” Edward asked. “You got oil stains all up the sleeve of that one.”

“Ye-es.” The chiming became a clanging - Tjelvar drummed his fingers on the table. “I remember - it was when I was looking through the hatch in the carriage floor. I’ve seen a stain like that before, but  _ where… _ ”

“Did you see one on Mr Skye?” asked Edward, hopefully. “You could prove that he did the sabotage, if you did.”

“Maybe, I’m just trying to place it -” and it snapped into place. “The handkerchief - Effi Weber’s handkerchief had the same marks on it, you remember, Ed? She smudged it all across her face and I had to lend her mine so she could wipe it off.”

“What would Mrs Weber have been doing down there?” Edward looked baffled, but realisation was doing the work of two black coffees and a bucket of cold water for Tjelvar.

“The mimics - the fire - they were both aimed at Katharina,” Tjelvar said, the memories playing out in his mind. “Who had a castle in Sponheim and left all her staff behind to save herself.” Tjelvar felt his heart accelerate. “And then there’s Effi Weber, who knew Katharina and her family and who no longer has her daughters.” Tjelvar felt his stomach drop. “Oh, gods. She even made sure some of her bags were stored next to Katharina’s. How do you smuggle a mimic on board a train? You disguise it as your own luggage.” He looked up to watch Edward’s confusion crystalise into realisation. “We’ve got to warn Katharina.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jaliuboots is just fantastic, isn't she? Check out their work on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/the.one.the.only.mimi.q/), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/QTheonetheonly), and [tumblr](https://theonetheonlymimiq.tumblr.com/).


	10. Journey's End

It took them almost half an hour to duck beneath the courtyard canopies of the Assaha Hotel. They’d gone first to the station to find the greeting staff on the East Sahara desk. Tjelvar knew he ought to feel a prickle of guilt for looming over the dwarf on duty in unison until they admitted that the company had a deal with the Assaha to put up crew and any passengers they wanted to offer complimentary accommodation to.

They ran to the hotel itself, Tjelvar taking them through the narrow cut lanes between the broad, crowded streets, twisting and turning and ducking through strings of light that seemed to catch in their hair and clothes. Tjelvar almost skidded on the tiled floor of the courtyard that served as the lobby, casting about for someone to ask. He spotted a neatly uniformed young woman at a desk, her uniform azure blue to match the wooden accents to the arches of the hotel behind her and the tiles of the fountains that dotted the courtyard. He shook himself and did his best to put on his most fearsome scowl.

“Oh! Evening, Eddie.” Nadiya Hassan blinked up from her book where she sat by the fountain, a mostly-empty pitcher of something fragrant in front of her. “Tjelvar. Didn’t realise you were staying here.”

“We’re not,” said Edward. “We’re looking for Katharina.” The seriousness in the paladin’s tone didn’t fail to register.

“Is she - this isn’t because of what happened on the train, is it?” Nadiya’s eyes went wide, then hard, and Tjelvar spared a moment to be impressed again by the steel in her.

“Nadiya, I think half of it was aimed at her and I don’t think she’s out of danger,” said Tjelvar. “Do you know which room she’s in?”

“236,” said Nadiya, pointing. “Take the back stairs, they’ll lead you right to it. I’ll get help.”

Tjelvar didn’t stop to call his thanks over his shoulder, but hoped he’d have a moment to tell her later. They clattered up the stairs, Tjelvar wondering fleetingly whether they should have opted for stealth, but could barely bring himself to think about slowing down.

Edward got to the door first and hammered on it. “Ms Katharina? Hugo? It’s Edward, are you in there?” He hammered again. “Hello?”

_ Answer it _ , willed Tjelvar.  _ Answer it, you stupid spoiled girl, cry at us for runining your evening. I’ll even apologise and send some wine to your room. Just answer the damn door. _

“I can’t hear anything.” Edward’s jaw was set tight as he looked around at Tjelvar.

“Right. Think you can break it down?”

“Reckon I can, yeah.” Edward took a step back and gave the door an almighty boot, shattering the wood around the lock and sending it crashing back against the room’s wall.

“Sweet Apollo,” gasped Edward, before diving into the room.

It was a comfortable room, stuccoed walls following the high, pointed arch of the windows, detailing picked out in blue and white. Tjelvar thought the floor might have been tiled in a pattern of waves - it was difficult to tell through all the blood.

Katharina lay on the bed, eyes glassy, breath stuttering through the blood that ran from her nose and mouth. Hugo lay on the floor at the foot of it, pinned to the ground with his own sword like a butterfly in a display case. He shifted weakly, hand reaching out to Katharina, trying to get to her and failing.

Tjelvar took a step in to follow Edward, who was on his knees beside Hugo, speaking in calm, measured tones as he assessed the scale of the problem at hand, and stopped. In the gloom his eyes caught something - a mis-shaped shadow or a curtain that billowed wrong - and he drew a sharp breath to call a warning as a blade glinted in the dim light from the corridor and Tjelvar heard Edward cry out.

“Stay still, please, Edward,” said Effi Weber, voice calm and even, long-bladed stiletto pressed into the tender spot beneath his chin. “Come in, Tjelvar. Shut the door, please, assuming it can still be shut.” Tjelvar did so, keeping his eyes on Edward, knelt in front of Effi, his face forced upwards by the pressure of her blade.

“I’m sorry the two of you had to be drawn into this again,” she said, her tone affable. “But I really can’t let you stop me this time.”

“Mrs Weber, can we please talk about this?” Tjelvar’s voice was soft and shook slightly as he felt his boot slide slightly on the slick tiles beneath them. Edward had no armour - didn’t even have his morningstar. Effi, on the other hand, stood straight and confident, unaffected by the butchery in the room. She still wore all black, but the frilliest parts of her widow’s weeds had been discarded. She looked much younger, much less like the frail, cantankerous old biddy they’d known on the train.

“Oh, I think you’ve worked most of it out by now,” Effi smiled. “Do you know, I looked her straight in the eye when I boarded that train and she didn’t recognise me. I’ve known her since she was a baby, and she looked through me.” Effi snorted. “Not that I should have expected anything else from a murderer like her.”

“She left your family to die,” said Tjelvar, hoping to keep her talking, ears straining for the sound of backup that refused to arrive.

“It was my girls, you see,” Effi nodded. “One a maid, one a stablehand. They were trapped in that godsforsaken castle. They’d been told to board it up then wait for rescue - they were too young to know they shouldn’t have had any faith in this little bitch. My Otto told me to get to the wagons, to make ready, that he’d get the girls and then we’d escape.” Her mouth twisted, a trembling lip brought swiftly under control. “I never saw any of them again.”

“So you decided to find the person who gave the order,” said Tjelvar prompted, cursing the silence in the hall behind him, praying that Nadiya wouldn’t be long.

“It was a coincidence, really,” Effi said. “I got off the boat in Alexandria, still numb and lost, and I heard her having a tantrum about her luggage. All those miles, and there she was. It took me a while, what with the continued evacuations south, but I made my plan. A sabotaged train and a catastrophic fire - an accident? Who knows, but what a sad end to a rich girl and the old widow in the carriage next to her.”

“You were the one who was going to get off the train at Shendi.” Nathaniel had been right - it was a clever plan.

Effi nodded. “I hoped in the confusion, it would just be assumed I’d died. And off I could go into the sands, take off my widow’s weeds and at last rejoin the land of the living, my debt paid to my kin. And then of course sweet little Bronwyn Jones dived into my cabin and dragged me to safety.” She laughed, and Tjelvar noticed it was genuine. “I really am sorry - no one else was ever meant to get tangled up in this. It was all my fault, really. I didn’t check well enough that I was clear and when that poor gnomish gentleman asked what I thought I was doing, I panicked.”

Tjelvar breathed slowly out. So that was the truth about Archie.

“Which brings us to the present moment. I am sorry, Edward,” she said, running an almost maternal hand over his hair. “But I can’t let you live.”

“ _ No _ ,” gasped Tjelvar, catching himself a moment later. “Mrs Weber, please, you don’t have to do this.”

“This is  _ all _ I have to do, Tjelvar. I suspect I don’t have long enough to wait for these two to bleed to death, and if I let Edward go now, he’ll just heal them both and I won’t allow that.” Her eyes flashed. “I’ve come too far.”

“You’ve already got the blood of two innocent men on your hands -” Tjelvar took one tiny step towards her, hand reaching out in supplication. He stopped as Effi pressed her blade harder into Edward’s neck and Edward stifled a cry of pain. “Edward has done nothing to you, please, don’t add his.”

“I don’t want to,” she said, her voice heavy. “You’re good men, the both of you. I almost wished I could drop the dreadful old cow act on the train - it was so nice to see you with the twins. It feels like an age since I heard children laugh like that.”

“It felt for a moment like none of this had ever happened.” Tjelvar murmured, watching her sad nod in agreement. “Mrs Webber, I am  _ begging _ you, let them live. Haven’t we had enough death?”

"How can you ask that of me?" For the first time, Effi Weber’s mask cracked, hairline fractures across her porcelain composure as the raw agony beneath threatened to leak out. Her hand tightened in Edward's hair. "How can you plead for  _ mercy?  _ She took  _ everything _ from me!"

"You’re right, she did," said Tjelvar, willing his eyes to remain on her face and not on the tiny rivulet of Edward's blood running down her blade. "Please, Effi, don't take everything from me in turn."

Effi froze, lips pressed firm and nostrils flaring, eyes boring into Tjelvar as though willing him to be false, to be lying. Tjelvar swallowed, took another incremental step forward. “ _ Please _ ,” he said.

Effi watched him a moment longer, before her face creased in a furious scowl and her blade jerked. Edward cried out, toppling forward as though shoved - new blood splattered on the tiles - Tjelvar heard his own hoarse response as he threw himself down to catch Edward.

“I’m okay,” Edward grasped for Tjelvar’s hands as they searched his neck for a wound, for somewhere to apply pressure and stop bleeding. “Tjelvar I’m fine, it’s okay, I’m fine.” Edward finally stopped trying to take Tjelvar’s hands and took his face instead, forcing their eyes to meet. “It’s just a scratch. I’m okay.” The fever spike of panic finally beginning to quell, Tjelvar looked at him, at the small trickle of blood running from the cut on his chin, to his unimpeded breathing, and collapsed forward to throw his arms around Edward and hold him as close as possible.

Edward hugged him a moment, letting out a shaking breath into his hair before gently pulling away and turning to his healing duties as a paladin, as the staircase outside rang with the sound of the cavalry finally arriving.

*

“Looks like you might have ruined another shirt,” said Edward, a short while later, sat next to Tjelvar on the rim of one of the courtyard’s fountains, close enough that their knees and elbows brushed. Tjelvar had been quiet up until then, holding the warm cup of scented tea a kind bellhop had brought him and slowly breathing out the acid nausea in his stomach. He glanced down, following Edward’s look to the drying bloodstains on the collar. Tjelvar glanced up to Edward’s neck, dried blood flaking on the skin of it, and felt sick all over again.

“I should probably stop wearing them,” he said, looking back into his cup. “No good seems to come of it.”

“Or of going to dinner.” Edward attempted humour, and missed.

“Ha! No, apparently not. I remember when I could go out for a meal and no one would be trying to kill me at all.” Tjelvar looked at Edward, gave him an apologetic little smile. “I think the cafe will be closed now, I’m afraid.”

“There’ll be other days,” said Edward, smiling softly back.

“There will, won’t there,” said Tjelvar, before catching a better look at Edward’s neck and frowning. “Ed, are you still bleeding? I thought the clerics looked you over.”

“Oh - yeah, but when they got to the room I told them it was Katharina and Hugo that needed their help, like - think they had a lot of work to do.”

“Well that won’t do,” said Tjelvar, shifting to face him and balancing the cup of tea on the fountain edge beside him. “Let me see.” He took Edward’s chin in one hand and turned it gently. It was an ugly little wound, shallow and long, prone to bleeding.

"Tjelvar, it's just a scratch." Edward tried to slip out of Tjelvar's hold and failed.

"It's a scratch right next to your jugular, Eddie, hold still." Tjelvar fussed, using his handkerchief and water from the pitcher they’d been left to dab the wound gently clean and Edward’s skin free of blood. He could have demanded Edward heal it, he supposed, but he needed something to tamp down the urge to burst into tears on Edward's shoulder. Edward was here, he was safe - Tjelvar could feel the proof of his still-beating heart beneath his fingers, and submitted it to evidence to his still-constricted lungs that they could release and let him breathe now.

“They didn’t find Mrs Webber, did they?” asked Edward as Tjelvar ministered to him.

“No, they didn’t.” Tjelvar had looked for her himself as Edward had started the process of healing. The room’s balcony doors were wide open, leading to a flat roof and the cover of several palm trees. There were plenty of places for someone quick and clever to hide.

“Do you think she’ll try again?” Edward winced slightly as Tjelvar patted around the edges of a cut.

“I don’t know,” he replied. Effi had taken pity on him in the room - Tjelvar still didn’t know if that grace extended to Katharina and Hugo. They had been saved for the moment; Tjelvar had seen the clerics lead them out of the room. Both of them looked very much the worse for wear, but they were upright, walking and clinging to each other. They would be fine, for now. “There,” said Tjelvar, dropping the handkerchief (another one ruined) and loosening, though not releasing, his hold on Edward’s chin. “That’s better.”

“Thanks,” Edward’s smile was almost distracted.

“Couldn’t just leave my favourite paladin bleeding like that,” replied Tjelvar, rubbing his thumb in a small, absent circle on Edward’s cheek.

"Tjelvar what you said-" Edward's words came out so quickly there was barely a beat to separate them. "When you said I was  _ everything _ \- I mean that was just to get Mrs Weber to let go, wasn't it? You didn't mean I was actually…"

He trailed off, holding Tjelvar’s gaze a moment before looking down and blushing. There was something self-protective in it, the huddling of something small and vulnerable expecting an attack. The big strong paladin, still standing after fighting mimics and elementals and gods-knew-how-many murderers, flinching ready for a dreaded blow. Tjelvar wondered how many he’d received over the years, how many times Edward had held out his heart like this and been hurt.  _ Probably quite a few _ , thought Tjelvar,  _ if he’s already preparing for it to happen again _ .

Tjelvar took a breath, let his hand slide along the length of Edward’s jaw, and kissed him. It was a small thing, a press of lips on lips. One might even have called it chaste, if it hadn’t been for the way Edward leaned into it, parted his lips beneath Tjelvar’s and let something longing and full of promise rumble in his throat.

Tjelvar pulled back, his knuckles still tracing the line of Edward’s cheekbone. Edward’s eyes stayed closed, mouth slightly open, until he inhaled and looked back at Tjelvar with an expression so wide open it almost took Tjelvar’s breath.

"You're a long way from nothing to me, Edward." Tjelvar murmured, watching that look expand, watching Edward swallow, then smile, wondering and impossibly bright.

"Right. That's - wicked. Yeah." He leaned forward, nudged his nose against Tjelvar’s and set the orc grinning.

“It is a bit, isn’t it?”

*

*

_ This is a strange kind of everything _ , Tjelvar thought as they headed out of the Assaha’s courtyard an hour or so later, having given their statements to the police and assurances to the clerics that they didn’t need any medical attention. Edward had shyly slipped his hand in Tjelvar’s, and he was still weighing up the comparative smallness of the gesture with the enormity of its significance. This thing between them was something fledgeling and delicate that Tjelvar couldn't quite decide on a name for, and yet more than he'd been able to call his own for what felt like half a lifetime. It was almost frighteningly fragile, something to be nurtured and nourished and endlessly fretted over in case it blossomed into something miraculous. Tjelvar knew the name for that at least, knew it well enough to shun it for all the pain it had brought him. But then he caught Edward glancing at him, got to watch Edward look away hurriedly then realise they were still holding hands and look bashfully back.

Perhaps Tjelvar could let some small hope settle in his heart, just for the evening.

It was an alien little thing to carry, months after banishing it from himself entirely. But it perched on his soul and sang its quiet song as they bought a bottle of red wine and sat in the small and secluded courtyard behind Tjelvar’s apartment and taking turns drinking it out of the bottle. It trilled as Tjelvar trailed off mid-sentence, watching a drop of wine run across Edward’s lower lip, overcome with the urge to lean in and taste it. It sang as the clock in the courtyard chimed midnight and Edward jerked back from a kiss, realising he should have been back at the Al-Tahan estate an hour ago. It preened his feathers as Tjelvar promised Edward they’d see each other the next day, seeing the paper lanterns of the Al-Tahan’s parlour garden reflected in his eyes. Tjelvar went to sleep to its song, throwing himself into bed in the small hours with his hair still mussed and lips still tingling.

He heard it loudest when he woke in the midmorning to an unaccustomed hush and brightness, throwing open his shutters to see, through a gap in the awnings, the bright blue of a clear, still, stormless sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final, beautiful, hearteyes-inducing art goes to Afarai <3<3<3
> 
> Thank you so much to my spectacular collaborators! It was such a pleasure working with you and it was so humbling to see you bring this fic to life! You're amazing and I can't expressed how thrilled I am with what we made together!
> 
> Please go and look at more of their fantastic work:
> 
> Afarai at https://afarai.tumblr.com
> 
> Jailuboots at:  
> https://www.instagram.com/the.one.the.only.mimi.q/  
> https://twitter.com/QTheonetheonly  
> https://theonetheonlymimiq.tumblr.com/
> 
> Thank you also to the RQBB20 organisers! You did a difficult job extremely well and I will buy you a coffee next time we all end up in meatspace together!
> 
> Finally, my heartfelt apologies to Agatha Christie. But in my defence, no one smooched on the Orient Express, so.


End file.
